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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a grotesque caricature of
virtue did not spare virtue herself. Whatever the canting
Roundhead had regarded with reverence was insulted. Whatever he
had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous about
trifles, all scruples were treated with derision. Because he had
covered his failings with the mask of devotion, men were
encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most
scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished
illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal
fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was
his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and
much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in
scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never
opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter
would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse
them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them.
It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it
revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical
polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men,
who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt from the
general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the
sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous generation.
Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters,
raised his voice courageously against the immorality which
disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at
once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditates,
undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a
song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the
lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye
which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper
pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigourous and
fertile genius of Butler, if it did not altogether escape the
prevailing infection, took the disease in a mild form. But these
were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed
away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of
wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the
common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering
licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of
these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it
would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which
they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time,
rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous art
of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is
endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain
decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery may be
more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far
more powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert
itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in passively.
The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole
polite literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the
very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic
drama. The playhouses, shut by the meddling fanatic in the day of
his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new and
more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses, and
decorations, such as would now be thought mean or absurd, but
such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by those
who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benches
of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the
eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to
aid the fascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with
emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson,
tender and sprightly heroines personated by lovely women. From
the day on which the theatres were reopened they became
seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated itself. The
profligacy of the representations soon drove away sober people.
The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every year
stronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted the
spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of
the drama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that
extreme relaxation is the natural effect of extreme restraint,
and that an age of hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things,
followed by all age of impudence.
Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with
which the poets contrived to put all their loosest verses into
the mouths of women. The compositions in which the greatest
license was taken were the epilogues. They were almost always
recited by favourite actresses; and nothing charmed the depraved
audience so much as to hear lines grossly indecent repeated by a
beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not yet lost her
innocence 174
Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and
characters to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters:
but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In their
imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and highspirited
Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a
procuress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes an
adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that it
became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and
ignoble minds.
Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department
of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of
obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so
small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more
than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There
cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last
production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was
universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It
contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification is
admirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this
day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, Theodore and
Honoria, are the delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The
collection includes Alexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our
language. For the copyright Dryden received two hundred and fifty
pounds, less than in our days has sometimes been paid for two
articles in a review.175 Nor does the bargain seem to have been a
hard one. For the book went off slowly; and the second edition
was not required till the author had been ten years in his grave.
By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a much larger
sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by
one play.176 Otway was raised from beggary to temporary affluence
by the success of his Don Carlos.177 Shadwell cleared a hundred
and thirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of
Alsatia.178 The consequence was that every man who had to live by
his wit wrote plays, whether he had any internal vocation to
write plays or not. It was thus with Dryden. As a satirist he has
rivalled Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps might, with care
and meditation, have rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if
not the most sublime, the most brilliant and spiritstirring. But
nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts, had withheld from him
the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all the energies of his best
years were wasted on dramatic composition. He had too much
judgment not to be aware that in the power of exhibiting
character by means of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency
he did his best to conceal, sometimes by surprising and amusing
incidents, sometimes by stately declamation, sometimes by
harmonious numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well suited to
the taste of a profane and licentious pit. Yet he never obtained
any theatrical success equal to that which rewarded the exertions
of some men far inferior to him in general powers. He thought
himself fortunate if he cleared a hundred guineas by a play; a
scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger than he could have
earned in any other way by the same quantity of labour.179
The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain from the
public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking
out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every
rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a
mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in
our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed
was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee
paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the
sum which any publisher would give for the copyright. Books were
therefore frequently printed merely that they might be dedicated.
This traffic in praise produced the effect which might have been
expected. Adulation pushed to the verge, sometimes of nonsense,
and sometimes of impiety, was not thought to disgrace a poet.
Independence, veracity, selfrespect, were things not required by
the world from him. In truth, he was in morals something between
a pandar and a beggar.
To the other vices which degraded the literary character was
added, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the
most savage intemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a class,
had been impelled by their old hatred of Puritanism to take the
side of the court, and had been found useful allies. Dryden, in
particular, had done good service to the government. His Absalom
and Achitophel, the greatest satire of modern times had amazed
the town, had made its way with unprecedented rapidity even into
rural districts, and had, wherever it appeared bitterly annoyed
the Exclusionists. and raised the courage of the Tories. But we
must not, in the admiration which we naturally feel for noble
diction and versification, forget the great distinctions of good
and evil. The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers
were at this time animated against the Whigs deserves to he
called fiendish. The servile Judges and Sheriffs of those evil
days could not shed blood as fast as the poets cried out for it.
Calls for more victims, hideous jests on hanging, bitter taunts
on those who, having stood by the King in the hour of danger, now
advised him to deal mercifully and generously by his vanquished
enemies, were publicly recited on the stage, and, that nothing
might he wanting to the guilt and the shame, were recited by
women, who, having long been taught to discard all modesty, were
now taught to discard all compassion.180
It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of
England was thus becoming a nuisance and a national disgrace, the
English genius was effecting in science a revolution which will,
to the end of time, be
virtue did not spare virtue herself. Whatever the canting
Roundhead had regarded with reverence was insulted. Whatever he
had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous about
trifles, all scruples were treated with derision. Because he had
covered his failings with the mask of devotion, men were
encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most
scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished
illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal
fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was
his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and
much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in
scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never
opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter
would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse
them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them.
It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it
revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical
polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men,
who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt from the
general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the
sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous generation.
Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters,
raised his voice courageously against the immorality which
disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at
once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditates,
undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a
song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the
lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye
which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper
pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigourous and
fertile genius of Butler, if it did not altogether escape the
prevailing infection, took the disease in a mild form. But these
were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed
away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of
wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the
common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering
licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of
these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it
would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which
they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time,
rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous art
of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is
endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain
decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery may be
more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far
more powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert
itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in passively.
The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole
polite literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the
very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic
drama. The playhouses, shut by the meddling fanatic in the day of
his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new and
more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses, and
decorations, such as would now be thought mean or absurd, but
such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by those
who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benches
of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the
eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to
aid the fascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with
emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson,
tender and sprightly heroines personated by lovely women. From
the day on which the theatres were reopened they became
seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated itself. The
profligacy of the representations soon drove away sober people.
The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every year
stronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted the
spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of
the drama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that
extreme relaxation is the natural effect of extreme restraint,
and that an age of hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things,
followed by all age of impudence.
Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with
which the poets contrived to put all their loosest verses into
the mouths of women. The compositions in which the greatest
license was taken were the epilogues. They were almost always
recited by favourite actresses; and nothing charmed the depraved
audience so much as to hear lines grossly indecent repeated by a
beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not yet lost her
innocence 174
Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and
characters to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters:
but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In their
imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and highspirited
Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a
procuress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes an
adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that it
became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and
ignoble minds.
Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department
of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of
obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so
small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more
than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There
cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last
production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was
universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It
contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification is
admirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this
day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, Theodore and
Honoria, are the delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The
collection includes Alexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our
language. For the copyright Dryden received two hundred and fifty
pounds, less than in our days has sometimes been paid for two
articles in a review.175 Nor does the bargain seem to have been a
hard one. For the book went off slowly; and the second edition
was not required till the author had been ten years in his grave.
By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a much larger
sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by
one play.176 Otway was raised from beggary to temporary affluence
by the success of his Don Carlos.177 Shadwell cleared a hundred
and thirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of
Alsatia.178 The consequence was that every man who had to live by
his wit wrote plays, whether he had any internal vocation to
write plays or not. It was thus with Dryden. As a satirist he has
rivalled Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps might, with care
and meditation, have rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if
not the most sublime, the most brilliant and spiritstirring. But
nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts, had withheld from him
the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all the energies of his best
years were wasted on dramatic composition. He had too much
judgment not to be aware that in the power of exhibiting
character by means of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency
he did his best to conceal, sometimes by surprising and amusing
incidents, sometimes by stately declamation, sometimes by
harmonious numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well suited to
the taste of a profane and licentious pit. Yet he never obtained
any theatrical success equal to that which rewarded the exertions
of some men far inferior to him in general powers. He thought
himself fortunate if he cleared a hundred guineas by a play; a
scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger than he could have
earned in any other way by the same quantity of labour.179
The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain from the
public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking
out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every
rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a
mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in
our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed
was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee
paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the
sum which any publisher would give for the copyright. Books were
therefore frequently printed merely that they might be dedicated.
This traffic in praise produced the effect which might have been
expected. Adulation pushed to the verge, sometimes of nonsense,
and sometimes of impiety, was not thought to disgrace a poet.
Independence, veracity, selfrespect, were things not required by
the world from him. In truth, he was in morals something between
a pandar and a beggar.
To the other vices which degraded the literary character was
added, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the
most savage intemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a class,
had been impelled by their old hatred of Puritanism to take the
side of the court, and had been found useful allies. Dryden, in
particular, had done good service to the government. His Absalom
and Achitophel, the greatest satire of modern times had amazed
the town, had made its way with unprecedented rapidity even into
rural districts, and had, wherever it appeared bitterly annoyed
the Exclusionists. and raised the courage of the Tories. But we
must not, in the admiration which we naturally feel for noble
diction and versification, forget the great distinctions of good
and evil. The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers
were at this time animated against the Whigs deserves to he
called fiendish. The servile Judges and Sheriffs of those evil
days could not shed blood as fast as the poets cried out for it.
Calls for more victims, hideous jests on hanging, bitter taunts
on those who, having stood by the King in the hour of danger, now
advised him to deal mercifully and generously by his vanquished
enemies, were publicly recited on the stage, and, that nothing
might he wanting to the guilt and the shame, were recited by
women, who, having long been taught to discard all modesty, were
now taught to discard all compassion.180
It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of
England was thus becoming a nuisance and a national disgrace, the
English genius was effecting in science a revolution which will,
to the end of time, be
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