PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 419 



Company, however, marked the commencement of the conquest 

 of India by the English, which was gradually achieved during the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A number of books of travel, 

 among them notably those by Linschoten, Hakluyt, Sandys, and 

 Purchas, apprized the British public of the men, manners, institu- 

 tions, and scenery of the newly conquered countries. But it was long 

 before the conquest of India became of significance also for English 

 literature. Fletcher's Island Princess (1621) and Dryden's Aureng- 

 zebe (1657) remained rather solitary specimens of poems with the 

 scene localized in India. Nor were the treasures of old Indian litera- 

 ture disclosed and made accessible until much later times. The 

 importance of the steadily proceeding conquest of India for English 

 literature in the next century and a half consisted principally in 

 keeping the interest of the English permanently directed toward the 

 Orient. 



The countries east and south of the Mediterranean, from the old 

 Moorish dominion in Spain and Morocco to Persia and Turkey, still 

 continued to furnish the local background of the majority of poems 

 with Oriental subjects. 



But to the sober zeal of the Puritans, with their strenuous religious 

 and social aims, the satiated, indolent, sensuous life of the heathenish, 

 Muhammadan Orient in general could not but be a matter of detest- 

 ation. It is, therefore, natural enough that in the first half of the 

 seventeenth century, as in the preceding Elizabethan ages, we find 

 but comparatively few works with Oriental coloring. Massinger, in 

 his drama, The Renegado (1624), created the type of the defiant 

 renegade w r hich was to become such a favorite figure, especially in the 

 poetry of Byron. Fletcher's Island Princess (1621) has already been 

 mentioned; Chapman's Revenge for Honour, Lord Brooke's Alaham 

 (1633), Suckling's Aglaura (1638), and Denham's The Sophy (1641) 

 belong to this period. 



With the Restoration of the Stuarts, however, which caused 

 such a general revolution in the history of English literature, a golden 

 age of Oriental subjects began, occasioned partly by the historical 

 facts already mentioned, partly by literary forces the influence of 

 French literature, and, coherent with it, the rise of the heroic drama. 



In France the interest in Oriental subjects had been revived by 

 the novels of Madeleine dc Scudery. In 1641, her Ibrahim ou Vlllustrt 

 Bassa appeared, which contained an episode on Mustapha ct Zcangir. 

 It was dramatized by her brother Georges in 1643, and was translated 

 into English. Between 1649 and 1653 Artamene, on Ic Grand Cyru*. 

 was issued, followed in 1660 by Almahidc. All of these novels fur- 

 nished subject-matter for dramatic productions by English writers. 

 The heroic novel was succeeded by the heroic drama. Both novelists 

 and dramatists took their themes with conscious preference from 



