The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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/> in truth they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even
in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded the
greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English women of
that generation were decidedly worse educated than they have been
at any other time since the revival of learning. At an early
period they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. In
the present day they seldom bestow much attention on the dead
languages; but they are familiar with the tongue of Pascal and
Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of
Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful
English than that which accomplished women now speak and write.
But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely
neglected. If a damsel had the least smattering of literature she
was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and
naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their
mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling such as a
charity girl would now be ashamed to commit.170
The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness,
the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode;
and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral
and intellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty,
it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the
admiration and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled
with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment.
The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers,
confidential friends, rather repelled than attracted the
libertines of Whitehall. In that court a maid of honour, who
dressed in such a manner as to do full justice to a white bosom,
who ogled significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in
pert repartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the
Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to sing sly verses with
sly expression, or to put on a page's dress for a frolic, was
more likely to be followed and admired, more likely to be
honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win a rich and
noble husband than Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson would have been.
In such circumstances the standard of female attainments was
necessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that
standard than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity
were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest
tincture of pedantry. Of the too celebrated women whose faces we
still admire on the walls of Hampton Court, few indeed were in
the habit of reading anything more valuable than acrostics,
lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the Grand Cyrus.
The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of
that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid and
profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at
least, did not flourish among us in the days of Charles the
Second, as it had flourished before the civil war, or as it again
flourished long after the Revolution. There were undoubtedly
scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from Homer to
Photius, was familiar: but such scholars were to be found almost
exclusively among the clergy resident at the Universities, and
even at the Universities were few, and were not fully
appreciated. At Cambridge it was not thought by any means
necessary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels in the
original.171 Nor was the standard at Oxford higher. When, in the
reign of William the Third, Christ Church rose up as one man to
defend the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, that great
college, then considered as the first seat of philology in the
kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic learning as is
now possessed by several youths at every great public school. It
may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at the
Universities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a
former age the poetry and eloquence of Greece had been the
delight of Raleigh and Falkland. In a later age the poetry and
eloquence of Greece were the delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham
and Grenville. But during the latter part of the seventeenth
century there was in England scarcely one eminent statesman who
could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.
Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed,
had not altogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still,
in many parts of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a
negotiator. To speak it well was therefore a much more common
accomplishment shall in our time; and neither Oxford nor
Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great occasion, could lay at the
foot of the throne happy imitations of the verses in which Virgil
and Ovid had celebrated the greatness of Augustus.
Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France
united at that time almost every species of ascendency. Her
military glory was at the height. She had vanquished mighty
coalitions. She had dictated treaties. She had subjugated great
cities and provinces. She had forced the Castilian pride to yield
her the precedence. She had summoned Italian princes to prostrate
themselves at her footstool. Her authority was supreme in all
matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined
how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must be,
whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on
his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to
the world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other
country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet
equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a
rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy
and of Spain had set; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The
genius, therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone
forth with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by
contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire over
mankind, such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For,
when Rome was politically dominant, she was in arts and letters
the humble pupil of Greece. France had, over the surrounding
countries, at once the ascendency which Rome had over Greece, and
the ascendency which Greece had over Rome. French was fast
becoming the universal language, the language of fashionable
society, the language of diplomacy. At several courts princes and
nobles spoke it more accurately and politely than their mother
tongue. In our island there was less of this servility than on
the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad qualities were those
of imitators. Yet even here homage was paid, awkwardly indeed and
sullenly, to the literary supremacy of our neighbours. The
melodious Tuscan, so familiar to the gallants and ladies of the
court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A gentleman who quoted
Horace or Terence was considered in good company as a pompous
pedant. But to garnish his conversation with scraps of French was
the best proof which he could give of his parts and
attainments.172 New canons of criticism, new models of style came
into fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had deformed the verses
of Donne, and had been a blemish on those of Cowley, disappeared
from our poetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully
involved, less variously musical than that of an earlier age, but
more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and
narrative. In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the
influence of French precept and of French example. Great masters
of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected
to use French words, when English words, quite as expressive and
sonorous, were at hand:173 and from France was imported the
tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and
speedily died.
It would have been well if our writers had also copied the
decorum which their great French contemporaries, with few
exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the English plays,
satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our
national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The
wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There was
no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole
system of human life from different points and in different
lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other. The
pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the stern
precisian even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. To
light and festive natures the solemnity of the zealous brethren
furnished copious matter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the
civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the
ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of assailing the
straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their
children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at
the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to
taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when
the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid,
ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during
two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly
smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers.
The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated
with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who
mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed.
The players were flogged. The press was put under the
guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from
their own favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw,
and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. The young
candidate for academical honours was no longer required to write
Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly
interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as to the day
and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system was of
course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under
visages composed to the expression of austerity lay hid during
several years the intense desire of license and of revenge. At
length that desire was gratified. The Restoration emancipated
thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable.
The old fight recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new.
It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death. The
Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whom he had
persecuted than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgent
slaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.
The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit
and morality. The hostility excited by
in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded the
greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English women of
that generation were decidedly worse educated than they have been
at any other time since the revival of learning. At an early
period they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. In
the present day they seldom bestow much attention on the dead
languages; but they are familiar with the tongue of Pascal and
Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of
Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful
English than that which accomplished women now speak and write.
But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely
neglected. If a damsel had the least smattering of literature she
was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and
naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their
mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling such as a
charity girl would now be ashamed to commit.170
The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness,
the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode;
and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral
and intellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty,
it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the
admiration and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled
with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment.
The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers,
confidential friends, rather repelled than attracted the
libertines of Whitehall. In that court a maid of honour, who
dressed in such a manner as to do full justice to a white bosom,
who ogled significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in
pert repartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the
Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to sing sly verses with
sly expression, or to put on a page's dress for a frolic, was
more likely to be followed and admired, more likely to be
honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win a rich and
noble husband than Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson would have been.
In such circumstances the standard of female attainments was
necessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that
standard than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity
were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest
tincture of pedantry. Of the too celebrated women whose faces we
still admire on the walls of Hampton Court, few indeed were in
the habit of reading anything more valuable than acrostics,
lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the Grand Cyrus.
The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of
that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid and
profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at
least, did not flourish among us in the days of Charles the
Second, as it had flourished before the civil war, or as it again
flourished long after the Revolution. There were undoubtedly
scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from Homer to
Photius, was familiar: but such scholars were to be found almost
exclusively among the clergy resident at the Universities, and
even at the Universities were few, and were not fully
appreciated. At Cambridge it was not thought by any means
necessary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels in the
original.171 Nor was the standard at Oxford higher. When, in the
reign of William the Third, Christ Church rose up as one man to
defend the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, that great
college, then considered as the first seat of philology in the
kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic learning as is
now possessed by several youths at every great public school. It
may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at the
Universities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a
former age the poetry and eloquence of Greece had been the
delight of Raleigh and Falkland. In a later age the poetry and
eloquence of Greece were the delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham
and Grenville. But during the latter part of the seventeenth
century there was in England scarcely one eminent statesman who
could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.
Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed,
had not altogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still,
in many parts of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a
negotiator. To speak it well was therefore a much more common
accomplishment shall in our time; and neither Oxford nor
Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great occasion, could lay at the
foot of the throne happy imitations of the verses in which Virgil
and Ovid had celebrated the greatness of Augustus.
Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France
united at that time almost every species of ascendency. Her
military glory was at the height. She had vanquished mighty
coalitions. She had dictated treaties. She had subjugated great
cities and provinces. She had forced the Castilian pride to yield
her the precedence. She had summoned Italian princes to prostrate
themselves at her footstool. Her authority was supreme in all
matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined
how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must be,
whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on
his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to
the world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other
country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet
equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a
rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy
and of Spain had set; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The
genius, therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone
forth with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by
contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire over
mankind, such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For,
when Rome was politically dominant, she was in arts and letters
the humble pupil of Greece. France had, over the surrounding
countries, at once the ascendency which Rome had over Greece, and
the ascendency which Greece had over Rome. French was fast
becoming the universal language, the language of fashionable
society, the language of diplomacy. At several courts princes and
nobles spoke it more accurately and politely than their mother
tongue. In our island there was less of this servility than on
the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad qualities were those
of imitators. Yet even here homage was paid, awkwardly indeed and
sullenly, to the literary supremacy of our neighbours. The
melodious Tuscan, so familiar to the gallants and ladies of the
court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A gentleman who quoted
Horace or Terence was considered in good company as a pompous
pedant. But to garnish his conversation with scraps of French was
the best proof which he could give of his parts and
attainments.172 New canons of criticism, new models of style came
into fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had deformed the verses
of Donne, and had been a blemish on those of Cowley, disappeared
from our poetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully
involved, less variously musical than that of an earlier age, but
more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and
narrative. In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the
influence of French precept and of French example. Great masters
of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected
to use French words, when English words, quite as expressive and
sonorous, were at hand:173 and from France was imported the
tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and
speedily died.
It would have been well if our writers had also copied the
decorum which their great French contemporaries, with few
exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the English plays,
satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our
national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The
wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There was
no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole
system of human life from different points and in different
lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other. The
pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the stern
precisian even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. To
light and festive natures the solemnity of the zealous brethren
furnished copious matter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the
civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the
ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of assailing the
straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their
children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at
the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to
taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when
the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid,
ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during
two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly
smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers.
The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated
with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who
mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed.
The players were flogged. The press was put under the
guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from
their own favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw,
and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. The young
candidate for academical honours was no longer required to write
Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly
interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as to the day
and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system was of
course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under
visages composed to the expression of austerity lay hid during
several years the intense desire of license and of revenge. At
length that desire was gratified. The Restoration emancipated
thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable.
The old fight recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new.
It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death. The
Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whom he had
persecuted than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgent
slaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.
The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit
and morality. The hostility excited by
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