beauty and beneficence of Nature. Her Gondibert loves, though Aribert had destined him for Rhodalind. When Gondibert seeks Astragon's assent to this love, he has to give an account of himself to the lady's father, and expresses much of the main thought of the poem by telling in what way he is ambitious. He has vanquished the Huns, he would conquer the world, but only because division of interest is the main cause of discord (here Thomas Hobbes approved the writer's principles), and Gondibert wished to bring the universe, for its own peace, under a single monarchy. A great warlike ambition; but, he says: "But let not what so needfully was done, Though still pursued, make you ambition feare; For could I force all monarchys to one, That universal crown I would not weare. He who does blindly soar at Rhodalind, Mounts like seeld Doves, still higher from his ease; High hope does better than fruition please. The victor's solid recompence is rest; And 'tis unjust that chiefs who pleasure shunn, With greater toyles, by ruling what they wo Leave shining thrones for Birtha in a shade; Davenant is artificial in his praise of Nature, but there is true dignity in many passages of Gondibert," with frequent felicity of expression; there is such aim at ingenuity as we find in the later Euphuists, modified by the new influence of the French critical school. Its chance of a good reception was not improved by Hobbes's declaration, made in its behalf, that "Gondibert" deserved to last as long as the Eneid or Iliad. The jest was ready against a book not serious enough for one-half of the public and too serious for the other, that said, laughing: "Room for the best of poets heroic, If you'll believe two wits and a stoic. Down go the Iliads, down go the Eneidos: All must give place to the Gondiberteidos." 24 John Dryden, born August 9th, 1631, at Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire, of good family, was educated at Westminster School, where he wrote some euphuistic verse, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.A. in 1654. TO A.D. 1660) DRYDEN. WITHER. the year of his father's death. He seems to have come to London in the summer of 1657, and was at first in the home of his cousin, and Cromwell's friend, Sir Gilbert Pickering. He was in his twenty-eighth year when Cromwell died, on the 3rd of September, 1658, and he wrote, after the funeral, one of the many tributes to his memory, Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell, using the measure of “Gondibert." With customary strain to be ingenious, there was a simple close. George Wither (ch. viii. § 39) and Andrew Marvell (§ 8) had followed Cromwell's career with their verse. George Wither had published, in 1655, a poem called The Protector, upon Cromwell's acceptance of that office. Andrew Marvell had written loyally on the first anniversary of his government, and he was now among the mourners. 25. The fabric held together by the might of Cromwell fell after his death. His amiable son Richard called a Parliament which vanished before the power of the army, and Richard Cromwell passed from the Protectorate to private life. He lived to see the Revolution, and he died a country gentleman, in 1712. The attempt to revive the Long Parliament as a central authority failed also to restrain the army. George Monk marched out of Scotland to subdue, as he said, the military tyranny in England, but it was soon evident that there was no hopeful way out of the discord but a Restoration of the Monarchy. In these days John Milton, first fearing predominance of the Presbyterians, had addressed to the Parliament called by Richard Cromwell A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, showing that it is not lawful for any power on earth to compel in matters of religion. To the revived Long Parliament, which succeeded the short-lived Parliament called by Richard Cromwell, Milton addressed Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church, in which he argued that each pastor should be maintained by his own flock. On the 20th of October, 1659, Milton wrote a letter to a friend On the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, and addressed a brief letter to Monk on The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in Practice and without Delay. A few months later he published a pamphlet called The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence thereof, compared with the Inconveniences and Dangers of Re-admitting Kingship in this Nation. His main suggestion was : Being now in anarchy, without a counselling 66 and governing power, and the army, I suppose, finding themselves insufficient to discharge at once both military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found out with all speed, without which no Commonwealth can subsist, must be a Senate, or General Council of State, in whom must be the power, first, to preserve the public peace; next, the commerce with foreign nations; and, lastly, to raise monies for the management of those affairs this must either be the Parliament re-admitted to sit, or a Council of State allowed of by the army, since they only now have the power. The terms to be stood on are, liberty of conscience to all professing Scripture to be their rule of faith and worship; and the abjuration of a single person." He urged to the last moment of hope the first principles of what he said is not called amiss "the good old cause ;” adding, “Thus much I should perhaps have said, though I was sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O Earth, Earth, Earth!' to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants of men !) to be the last words of our expiring liberty." CHAPTER X. FROM THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE REVOLUTION. CHARLES II. I. THE second of the Four Periods into which, with reference to outward fashion only. English Literature is divided, was now passing away, and the third-the Period of French Influence-came in rapidly after the accession of Charles II. We should have felt it sooner if we had been less intent upon our own affairs during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth, for the foundations of it were laid while Charles I. was our king. The English Royalists who lived in France after the failure of the king's cause were there being educated in its fashions. Italian influence in France, blended as elsewhere with influence of Spain, had produced forms answering to English Euphuism; but they were of a lower kind, because there was not then in France, as in England, a time of special literary energy. There was a taste for long stories, blending the Spanish A.D. 1660] PERIOD OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 629 chivalrous romance with the pastoral (ch. vi. § 39, 40), a more marked classicism, a delight in sounding phrases. In the time of our Elizabeth, Ronsard (b. 1524, d. 1585) was extending the use of the ten-syllabled line, rhymed in couplets, which became to the French what blank verse has become to us. Our poets were then experimenting, with various success, in the enrichment of the language with new words from Greek and Latin. Ronsard carried this far, tried Latin signs of comparison-docte, doctieur, doctime-and made a verse of three of the words that he wished he might use " ocymore, dyspotme, oligochronien." Malherbe (b. 1555, d. 1628) followed Ronsard with finer taste, and was, during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the most determined champion of the verbal purity of French. He was known as the tyrant of words and syllables. "This doctor in the vulgar tongue," wrote his friend Balzac, "used to say that for so many years he had been trying to de-Gasconise the Court, and that he could not do it. Death surprised him when rounding a period." "An hour before his death," says his disciple Racan, "Malherbe woke up with a start to correct his nurse for use of a word that was not good French; and when his confessor reprimanded him for that, he said that he could not help himself, and that he would defend to the death the purity of the French. language." We only understand, but Malherbe felt, the need of earnest critical attention to the unsettled language of his country as France rose in power. Deliberation in the choice of words made him a slow writer. He spent three years in the composition of an ode intended to console the President of Verdun for the loss of a wife. When the ode was finished, the president had consoled himself by marrying another. Sidney's Arcadia (ch. vii. § 44), which first blended the heroic with the pastoral in a long romance of adventure, had in England no direct imitators; but in France books of this kind established themselves as the prose fiction of their day, and the best of them, as we have seen (ch. ix. § 20) were translated into English during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth. Their line began with the Astrée of Honoré d'Urfé (b. 1567, d. 1625), first appearing in 1608, 10, 19, in three parts. His secretary, Baro, published the rest, completed in 1627. Our version appeared in 1657, as Astrea: A Romance written in French, by Messere Honoré d'Urfe, and Translated by a Person of Quality. Its primitive Arcadia was placed in the valley of the Loire; and its variety of excellent discourses and extraordinary sententiousness caused Richelieu to say that "He was not to be admitted into the Academy of Wit who had not been well read in ‘Astrea.'” In the year 1600, Catherine de Vivonne de Pisani married, at the age of sixteen, the Marquis de Rambouillet, Grand Master of the Royal Wardrobe. In the polite society gathered about her at the Hôtel Rambouillet ladies predominated; and they occupied themselves so much with the maintenance of a high standard of refinement in speech, that they and their imitators were called, in all gravity, and in their own fine phrase, Les Précieuses. French was unsettled. North and south of the Loire the difference of dialect was almost difference of language. The court dialect of Henry IV. and his Béarnois shocked all the polite Parisians; the king's oaths shocked the ladies. In those days polite people were reading the polite dialogue of "Astrée," Malherbe was upholding purity of French, Vaugelas (b. 1585, d. 1650) was giving his mind to a refined study of the language, and the blossom-time of French literature was not far distant. But of what use to have a literature where the language is unsettled, and a hundred years hence its changes will defeat an author's hope of outliving his body in his books? The ladies of Paris began the movement of reform by exercising social influence; and the Marquise de Rambouillet, reinforced by four daughters, was still living at the accession of Charles II. Many English "persons of quality" in Paris during the Commonwealth would be among her guests. The doings of the Précieuses, though blended with weakness and affectation, had importance for the history of literature during the first thirty or forty years of the seventeenth century. Receiving company while on her bed, after a fashion of the time and the manner of the whole community of the Précieuses, who followed in her steps--so giving to fashion the phrase "courir les ruelles "-and in winter denying fire as perilous to the complexion of herself and of her delicate guests in chamber, corridor, or alcove, the Marquise de Rambouillet welcomed princes and wits at her weekly feasts of verbal criticism. Before her circle Pierre Corneille read his tragedies, and the youth Bossuet first displayed the genius of the preacher. Purity of speech was demanded of all who frequented the Hôtel Rambouillet. There was to be no unclean word, and much that was common it pleased the particular genius of the house to call unclean. The marchioness disdaining her own common name of Catherine, Malherbe tortured his wit and produced for her |