The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

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