of obscure origin, and was brought up to the trade of a tinker. His youth, according to his own account, was wild and vicious; but having been impressed by the sermon of a Baptist preacher, at which he was accidentally present, he was led to enter into himself, and gradually reformed his life. Forsaking the Church of England, he joined the Baptists, and became a preacher among them. When, after the Restoration, severe laws were passed against nonconformity, Bunyan, refusing to be silenced, was thrown into Bedford Jail, where he was detained twelve years. Here it was that he wrote his famous allegory, the object of which is to represent, under the figure of a journey taken by a pilgrim, the course of a Christian's life in his passage through this world to the world to come. No original work in the English language has had a greater circulation than the "Pilgrim's Progress," nor been translated into a greater number of foreign languages. The work was first published complete in 1684; Bunyan died in 1688. It is needless to describe a book so well known; but I may remark that there seems a great falling-off in the account of the pilgrimage of Christiana and her sons, as compared with that of the pilgrimage of Christian. In truth, it appears from the poetical introduction to the second part, that the good man was excited and elated in spirit in no small degree by the extraordinary reception which his Christian had met with; he was conscious that greatness had been thrust upon him: and one misses accordingly, in the second part, something of the delightful freshness, the naturalness, the entire unconscious devotion of heart and singleness of purpose, which are so conspicuous in the first part. But what simple, equable, sinewy English the "inspired tinker" writes! what fulness of the Christian doctrine is in him! what clear insight into many forms of the Christian character! what thorough understanding of a vast variety of temptations, fleshly and spiritual! Under the head of Oratory we find scarcely any thing deserving of mention. Cromwell's speeches, with their designed ambiguity, their cloudy pietism, their involved long-winded sentences, are hardly readable, in spite of Mr. Carlyle's editorial industry. The speeches given in Clarendon's History are often very interesting; but the difficulty of knowing how much may be the author's own composition detracts, of course, from their value. Pamphlets issued in shoals from the press during all this period. History and Biography: Milton, Ludlow, Clarendon, &c., In our last notice of historical writing, it appeared that, in the first quarter of the century, the best of our historians had written on the affairs of Turkey and on the ancient world. But as the century wore on, and the shadow of the civil war began to darken the sky, English contemporary history became a subject of such absorbing and pressing interest, that our writers had no thought to spare for that of foreign nations. and distant times. Fuller, Milton, Ludlow, May, Whitlocke, Rushworth, and Clarendon,1 besides many inferior writers, wrote entirely, so far as they were historians at all, upon English affairs. Thomas Fuller, a clergyman of great wit and originality, wrote a "Church History of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year 1648;" this work was published in 1656. Milton's "History of England" is but a fragment, extending "from the first traditional beginning to the Norman Conquest." Ludlow was one of Cromwell's generals, and signed the warrant for Charles I.'s execu 1 For some remarks on Clarendon's History, see p. 480. tion; his "Memoirs," written during his exile in Switzerland, relating, for the most part, to events in which he had himself been an actor, were first published after his death in 1698. John May, a lawyer, described the civil strife, both in parliament and in the field, from the parliamentary point of view; his work, published about 1650, is described by Hallam as a kind of contrast to that of Clarendon. Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the commissioners of the Great Seal under Cromwell, composed some dull but in many respects. important memoirs, which were first published in 1682. Rushworth's "Historical Collections," a perfect mine of information, appeared in 1659. He was a clerk in the House of Commons, and for many years was in the habit of taking notes of "speeches and passages at conferences in parliament, and from the king's own mouth what he spoke to both houses, and was upon the stage continually an eye and an ear witness of the greatest transactions.” His Collections range over the period from 1618 to 1644. Of works subsidiary to history, e.g., biographies, personal memoirs, diaries, &c., we meet with a considerable number. The most important among them is the well-known "Athenæ Oxonienses" of Anthony à Wood, a "History of all the Writers and Bishops educated at Oxford from 1500 to 1695." Fuller's well-known biographical work on the "Worthies of England," containing sketches of about eighteen hundred individuals, -among others, of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakspeare, -arranged under the several counties of England and Wales, appeared in 1662, the year after his death. Izaak Walton, better known for his "Treatise on Angling," wrote lives of several eminent Anglican divines, including Hooker, Donne, and Sanderson. Baxter's 1 Wood's Athenæ. 66 66 Reliquiæ Baxterianæ," a curious autobiography, confused, however, in arrangement and badly edited, first appeared in 1696. All the material portions of it are given in Orme's Life of Baxter. The curious Diary" of Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty, extending over the years 1660-1669, was first given to the world in 1825, having lain veiled in its original cipher, till raked out of the MS. repository of the Pepysian Library, and deciphered under the superintendence of Lord Braybrooke. Andrew Marvell in his "Seasonable Argument," printed in 1677, thus disposes of Pepys, who was then member for the borough of Castle Rising: "Castle Rising: Samuel Pepys, once a taylor, then serving-man to the Lord Sandwitch, now secretary to the Admiralty, got by passes and other illegal wayes 40,000l." It was not Samuel, however, but his father, who was the tailor. John Evelyn, a country gentleman skilled in the mysteries of planting and landscape-gardening, is the author of a "Diary," first published in 1818, which, among other matters, contains an interesting account of the great fire of London, of which he was an eye-witness. We have few or no narratives of adventure, by sea or land, to record in connection with this period. A time of civil war concentrates the thoughts and the activity of men upon their own country, just as in the systole of the heart the blood all flows together to the vital centre. In tranquil times, the counter movement — the diastole sets in; and the energies of many of the most stirring and gifted persons in the nation are turned outwards, and employed over wide and remote areas in the search of excitement, or the investigation of nature. Theology: Hall, Jeremy Taylor, Bull, Baxter, &c. This is the Augustan period of Anglican divinity. If we examine the literature of the controversy that raged, in this as in the previous period, between the Church of England and the Puritans, we shall find that, if we put aside the writings of Milton, the Episcopalian writers immeasurably excelled their opponents, both in talent and learning. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, comes next for mention in order of time after Bishop Andrewes. By his reply to the pamphlet produced by five Puritan ministers, who wrote under the fictitious name of "Smectymnuus,' "1 he drew upon himself the fierce invectives of Milton. His "Meditations" and "Characters" will be noticed in the next section. Ejected by the Puritans from the see of Norwich in 1643, he retired to a small estate at Higham, where he died at a very advanced age in 1656. Jeremy Taylor, the most eloquent of English writers, was born at Cambridge in 1613. Like nearly all the Anglican divines of this period, he inclined to the tenets of Arminius, a Dutch theologian, who died in 1608, and whose opinions were vehemently anathematized after his death by the Calvinistic synod of Dort. If asked what precisely the Arminians held, one might answer, as Morley is said to have done 2 when a country squire put him the question, "All the best bishoprics and deaneries in England." It will be sufficient, however, to say that Arminianism was a species of Pelagianism, and arose by way of re-action against the predestinarian extravagances of the Calvinists. Coleridge gives the following graphic account of the English Arminians: Towards the close of the reign of our first James, and during the period from the accession of Charles I. to the restoration of his profligate son, 1 See p. 180, n. 2 Clarendon's Autobiography. |