390 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN 



prurient or wilfully provocative. It is impossible to imagine 

 an Elizabethan Aretino, or an Elizabethan Beccadelli writers, 

 that is to say, who deliberately attempt to interest those who 

 read their works in moral garbage. Of garbage there is 

 enough in that literature, and more than enough ; but only 

 in the same sense as there were* open drains and kennels in 

 the streets of London, by the brink of which high-tempered 

 gentlemen walked, and duels were fought, while dreams of 

 love warmed young imaginations, and wise debates on state- 

 craft or the destinies of empires were held by greybeards. 

 Of such kind is the rivulet of filth in Elizabethan poetry, 

 coursing, as the sewer then coursed, along the paths of men, 

 dividing human habitations. 



We have forced the sewage, which is inseparable from 

 humanity, to run underneath our streets and houses. We 

 have prohibited the entrance of unsavoury topics into our 

 literature. If Marston were born again among us we should 

 stop our noses, and bid the fellow stand aloof. Even Thomas 

 Carlyle has been christened by even Mr. Swinburne, Copro- 

 stomos, or some such Byzantine title, indicating intolerable 

 coarseness. This shows how resolute we are to root out 

 physical noisomeness, and with what sincerity we prefer 

 typhoid poison to the plague accompanied by evil odours. It 

 does not prove that we are spiritually cleaner than our 

 ancestors. The right deduction is that the race has preserved 

 its wholesomeness under conditions altered by a change of 

 manners. Neither then nor now, in the age of Elizabeth or 

 in the age of Victoria, has the English race devoted its 

 deliberate attention to nastiness. 



In breadth of view, variety of subject, our Victorian poets 

 rival the Elizabethan. Life has been touched again at all 

 points and under every aspect with equal boldness and with 

 almost equal manliness. But since the drama has ceased to 

 be the leading form of literature, the treatment of moral topics 

 has of necessity become more analytical and reflective. If 

 space allowed, this opinion might be supported by a com- 

 parison of the two epochs with regard to philosophic poetry. 

 In sententious maxims, apophthegms on human fate, pithy 



