OF LITERATURE. 



Ivii 



solitudes disclosed ; so that, at one time, he could 

 exhibit " all the world a stage, and all the men 

 and women merely players ;" at another time, he 

 could bid " close pent-up guilts rive their con- 

 cealing continents ;" at another, could summon 

 up before him " antres vast and desarts idle " to 

 be made populous with the fantastic beings of his 

 own imagination. Of Shakspeare, an universe 

 in himself, it seems superfluous to add that he is 

 to many minds the whole British theatre. In a 

 sketch, at least, so cursory as this, we shall not 

 attempt to chronicle its history on either side of 

 that engrossing name. Who would bear with us 

 in going back to the miracles and moralities of 

 the elder times ; to the elements of comedy in 

 Gammer Gurton's needle, or of tragedy in Sack- 

 ville's Gorboduc ? Full of the image of Shaks- 

 peare, who could descend to even the best of his 

 successors : to the forcible Massinger ; or the 

 pathetic Otway ; or the sparkling, rakish Far- 

 quhar ; or the brilliant Congreve ; or the ela- 

 borate Sheridan ; admirable painters as they all 

 are, ,in their several styles, of the lights and 

 shades of artificial life ? And, if it be true that, 

 among contemporary dramatists, Shakspeare was 

 not a single prodigy, but only the greatest of 

 many wonders, yet are not Webster and Deckar, 

 Marston and Marlow, Middleton and Rowley, 

 acknowledged by their eulogists to have sunk 

 into oblivion ? Nay, for a thousand who know 

 Shakspeare, is there one well versed in the 

 learned Jonson ; or the critical Beaumont ; or 

 his other soul, the most flowery, most ambi- 

 tious, most poetical Fletcher ? 



Shakspeare and his contemporaries bring us 

 just within the verge of the seventeenth century, 

 so memorable in our annals for the long struggle 

 against the arbitrary principles of the House of 

 Stuart, which it witnessed, and for the final 

 triumph of liberty over both the arms of her 

 enemies, and the far more dangerous and dis- 

 gusting crimes and follies of many who called 

 themselves her friends. Throughout this period, 

 notwithstanding numerous evils, which Provi- 

 dence alone could have over-ruled for ultimate 

 good, the advancement of letters was not retard- 

 ed. Upon the throne, the pedantry of James I. 

 was countervailed by the elegant taste of his 

 son ; and even his dissolute grandson, with all 

 his French predilections and itch for obscenity, 

 showed himself able to appreciate those more 

 manly attributes of British literature, which soon 

 afterwards derived fresh vigour from the Revolu- 

 tion of 1G88. In poetry, we boast of Hall, 

 Cowley,Waller, Milton,Butler, Dryden: in prose, 

 besides some of these poets, who were masters, 

 likewise, of the other branch of composition, we 



may distinguish Brown, Taylor, Barrow, Tillot- 

 son, and Temple. 



Bishop HAM,,* who claims, not quite justly, to 

 be esteemed the earliest English satirist, imitates 

 Juvenal, Persius, and occasionally Horace, with 

 so much wit and energy as to verify those funereal 

 lines, which say of him : 



" Whom Ashby bred and Granta nurs'd, 

 Whom Halstead and old Waltham first 

 To rouse the stupid world from sloth 

 Heard thund'ring with a golden mouth." 



Co\VLSY,t though led astray by an erroneous 

 school, compensates for his quaint, perverse 

 metaphysics, by dazzling gleams of a better na- 

 ture that was sometimes more powerful than his 

 system. WALLER,:}: the very father of smooth 

 versification in our language, was lucky in that 

 vein of song which calls upon its author for no 

 depth of passion or soaring pitch of thought. 

 In many particulars these poets are unlike, but 

 in both we perceive a certain polish of cour- 

 tesy and gallantry, which kept off the puritani- 

 cal rust of their times. And MILTON, too, 

 in all the nobler parts of his works, was at a 

 measureless distance from the puritans. What 

 has that hateful class of men, what have 

 their dishonest advocates, to do with anything 

 but the dross and rubbish of his soul ? We will 

 give up to them the sophistry and bitterness of 

 his controversial pen, the most lumbering por- 

 tions of his prose, and the flattest lucubrations of 

 his muse, when she grows polemical. But what 

 have they in common with him whose stately 

 verse adorned the masks and revels of our prime 

 nobility; with that beautiful youth, who slept 

 beneath Italian shades, not unvisited by dreams 

 such as haunt a land of poesy and love ; with 

 that nursling " of delightful studies " who, when 

 he girt up his loins, in maturer age, for an effort 

 which " aftertimes should not willingly let die," 

 it was to wrestle with the mighty champions of 

 Greece and Rome, in the strength of a kindred 

 inspiration ? How could the barbarous pre- 

 cisians of his day, or how can the canters of the 

 present age, those who, reversing the benevolence 

 of Christianity, would turn the racy wine of life 

 into the stagnant waters of their own sour fanati- 

 cism, pretend to sympathise with Milton in his 

 heathen lore and classic imagery, his luxuriance 

 of amorous sentiment, his warm, rich portraitures 

 of beauty and of joy ? Yet these are the things 

 by which he now lives, and for which he will 

 continue to be most dearly prized : 



A. D. 1574 165G. 

 f A. D. 1605-1687. 



t A. D. 16181667. 

 } A. D. 16081674. 



