xviii INTRODUCTION 



both the thought and action of the cultured Carolines 

 and Jacobines. The Age, moreover, was an eclectic 

 one, wherein the world prenait son bien (ou son ma/) 

 oii on le trouvait ; and while some "sauntered" in 

 the Garden and inhaled its spiritual aroma, others 

 pondered in the Porch, and yet others lingered amid 

 the Groves of the Academy according as they were 

 pleasurably, stoically, or platonically moulded. The 

 Lyceum alone attracted few loungers, for Aristotle 

 made too great demands upon the supine Spirit of the 

 Age. Among the more intellectual, the Academy 

 was in the ascendant ; indeed, Academies, in a general 

 sense, in some shape or other, seemed the Recreation 

 of the Contemplative Man, who preferred casting lines 

 for rational being6 to " compleatly " angling chubb. 



Richelieu and Colbert's foundation of the French 

 Academies of Letters and Sciences, (based upon earlier 

 Italian models) and Mazarin's Library, had set a 

 fashion for France under Louis XIV. was the law- 

 giver to Europe in matters of taste, culture and esprit. 

 Both Cowley and Evelyn, with many others, floated 

 schemes for the formation of Academies. Cowley's 

 foundered at his death, but Evelyn's finally resulted 

 in the establishment of that Royal Society the god- 

 parent of all later Royal Institutions, of which Lord 



