quaint gravity that adds to its charm, is thrown into a series of dialogues, first between Piscator, Venator, and Auceps, each of whom in turn proclaims the superiority of his favourite sport, and afterwards between Piscator and Venator, the latter of whom is converted by the angler, and becomes his disciple. Mixed up with technical precepts, now become a little obsolete, are an infinite number of descriptions of angling-days, together with dialogues breathing the sweetest sympathy with natural beauty and a pious philosophy that make Walton one of the most eloquent teachers of virtue and religion. The expressions are as pure and sweet and graceful as the sentiment; and the occasional occurrence of a little touch of oldfashioned innocent pedantry only adds to the indefinable fascination of the work, breaking up its monotony like a ripple upon the sunny surface of a stream. No other literature possesses a book similar to the Complete Angler, the popularity of which seems likely to last as long as the language. A second part was added by CHARLES COTTON (see p. 186), a clever poet, the friend and adopted son of Izaak, and his rival in the passion for angling. The continuation, though inferior, breathes the same spirit, and, like it, contains many beautiful and simple lyrics in praise of the art.

§ 18. GEORGE SAVILE, MARQUESS OF HALIFAX (1630-1695), one of the most illustrious statesmen of the Restoration, deserves notice on account of his political tracts, which, says Macaulay, "well deserve to be studied for their literary merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics.”

One of the most charming, as well as solid and useful, writers of this period was JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706), a gentleman of good family and considerable fortune, whose life and character afford a model of what is most to be envied and desired. Virtuous, accoinplished, and modest, he distributed his time between literary and philosophical occupations and the never-cloying amusements of rural life. He was one of the founders of the delightful art, so successfully practised in England, of gardening and planting. His principal works are Sylva, a treatise on the nature and management of foresttrees, to the precepts of which, as well as to the example of Evelyn himself, the country is indebted for its abundance of magnificent timber; and Terra, a work on agriculture and gardening. In both of these books we see not only the practical good sense of the author, but the benevolence of his heart, and an exquisite sensibility to the beauties of nature, as well as a profound and manly piety. In his feeling for the art of gardening he is the worthy successor of Bacon and predecessor of Shenstone. Evelyn has left also a Diary, giving a minute account of the state of society in his time; and his pictures of the incredible infamy and corruption of the court of Charles II., through the abominations of which the pure and gentle spirit of

Evelyn passed, like the Lady in Comus, amid the bestial rout of the Enchanter. His description of the tremendous fire of London in 1665, of which he was an eyewitness, is the most detailed as well as trustworthy and picturesque account of that awful calamity. It was at the country house of Evelyn, at Sayes Court, near Deptford, that Peter the Great was lodged during his residence in England; and Evelyn gives a lamentable account of the dirt and devastation caused in the dwelling and the beautiful garden by the barbarian monarch and his suite. Indeed he obtained from Government compensation for the injury done to his property. The Diary, as well as all the other works of this good man, abounds in traits of personal character. He, his family, and his friends, seem to have formed a little oasis of piety, virtue, and refinement, amid the desert of rottenness offered by the higher society of those days; and his writings will always retain the double interest derived from his personal virtues, and the fidelity with which they delineate a peculiar phase in the national history.

§ 19. An original and even comic personality of this era is SAMUEL PEPYS (1632-1703), whose individual character was as singular as his writings. He was the friendless cadet of an ancient family, but born in such humble circumstances that, after receiving some education at the University, he is supposed to have for some time exercised the trade of a tailor; and during his whole life he retained a most ludicrous passion for fine clothes, which he is never weary of describing with more than the gusto of a man-milliner. By the protection of a distant connexion, Sir Edward Montagu, he was placed in a subordinate office in the Admiralty; and by his punctuality, honesty, and knowledge of business, he gradually rose to the important post of Secretary in that department. He remained many years in this office, and must be considered as almost the only honest and able public official connected with the Naval administration during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. In the former of these the English marine was reduced, by the corruption and rapacity of the Court, to the very lowest depth of degradation and inefficiency. The successor of Charles was by profession a seaman, and on his accession employed all his efforts to restore the service to its former vigour. Perhaps the only portion of that miserable King's administration which can be regarded with anything but contempt and horror, is the effort he made to improve the condition of the Fleet. To this object the honesty and activity of Pepys contributed; and after acquiring a sufficient fortune without any serious imputation on his integrity, the old Secretary retired from the service to pass the evening of his life in well-earned ease. During the whole of his long and active career, Pepys had amused himself, for the eternal gratitude of posterity, in writing down, day by day, in a sort

of cypher or shorthand, a Diary of everything he saw, did, or thought. After having been preserved for about a century and a half, this curious record has been decyphered and given to the world; and the whole range of literature does not present a record more curious in itself, or exhibiting a more singular and laughable type of human character. Pepys was not only by nature a thorough gossip, curious as an old woman, with a strong taste for occasional jollifications, and a touch of the antiquary and curiosityhunter; but he was necessarily brought into contact with all classes of persons, from the King and his ministers down to the poor halfstarved sailors whose pay he had to distribute. Writing entirely for himself, Pepys, with ludicrous naïveté, sets down the minutest details of his gradual rise in wealth and importance, noting every suit of clothes ordered by either himself or his wife, which he describes with rapturous enthusiasm, and chronicling every quarrel and reconciliation arising out of Mrs. Pepys's frequent and not unfounded fits of jealousy; for he is suspiciously fond of frequenting the pleasant but profligate society of pretty actresses and singers. The Diary is a complete scandalous chronicle of a society so gay and debauched that the simple description of what took place is equal to the most dramatic picture of the novelist. The statesmen, courtiers, players, and demireps actually live before our eyes; and there is no book that gives so lively a portraiture of one of the extraordinary states of society that then existed. All the minutiae of dress, manners, amusements, and social life are vividly presented to us; and it is really alarming to think of the uproar that would have taken place if it had come to light that a careful hand had been chronicling every scandal of the day. Pepys's own character—an inimitable mixture of shrewdness, vanity, good sense, and simplicity—infinitely exalts the piquancy of his revelations; and his book possesses the double interest of the value and curiosity of its matter, and of the colouring given to that matter by the oddity of the narrator.

§ 20. As a type of the fugitive literature of this age may be mentioned the writings of SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE (1616-1704), an active pamphleteer and hack writer in favour of the Royalist party. His savage diatribes against the opponents of the Court are now almost forgotten, but they are curious as exhibiting a peculiar force of slang and vulgar vivacity which were then regarded as smart writing. His works are full of the familiar expressions which were current in society; and though low in taste, are not without a certain fire. Like another writer of the same stamp, Toм BROWN, he has given an example of how ephemeral must always be the success of that soi-disant humorous style which depends for its effect upon the employment of the current jargon of the town. In every age there are authors who trust to this for their popularity; and the temporary

vogue of such writers is generally as great as is the oblivion to which they are certain to be condemned. L'Estrange has curiously exemplified his mode of writing in a sort of prose paraphrase of the ancient Fables attributed to the mysterious name of Æsop; and his Life of that imaginary person is a rare specimen of the pert familiarity which at that time passed for wit.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

OTHER WRITERS.

DR. WALTER CHARLETON (1619-1707), physician to Charles II. and president of the College of Physicians. He was a man of sclence and a theologian, a philosopher and an antiquarian. In 1675 he published A brief Discourse concerning the different Wits of Men. One of his best productions was a translation of Epicurus's Morals, 1670. The rendering is accurate and the English idiomatic. He was among the first who accounted for the differences in men's minds by the size and form of the brain.

WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708), chiefly a critic, scholar, and patron of men of letters, but he himself published some fugitive places. He was member of Parliament for

Worcestershire; and is mentioned by Pope in the well known lines:

"But why then publish? Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.

CHARLES MONTAGU, EARL OF HALIFAX (1661-1715), a great patron of letters during the reigns of William III. and Anne. He himself wrote some poems, but oftenest his name appeared on the early pages of authors' works, "fed with soft dedication all day long." He assisted Prior in the City Mouse and the Country Mouse. He rose to great distinction as a politician in the reign of William III., when he filled the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was raised to the peerage in 1714, soon after the accession of George 1.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE NEW DRAMA AND THE CORRECT POETS.

§ 1. Contrast between the drama of Elizabeth and that of the Restoration. § 2. SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE. § 3. WILLIAM WYCHERLEY: his life and works. The Country Wife and the Plain Dealer. § 4. SIR JOHN VANBRUGH, The Relapse, the Provoked Wife, the Confederacy, and the Provoked Husband. § 5. GEORGE FARQUHAR. The Constant Couple, the Inconstant, the Recruiting Officer, and the Beaux' Stratagem. § 6. WILLIAM CONGREVE: his life. § 7. His works. The Old Bachelor. The Double Dealer. Love for Love. The Mourning Bride. § 8. JEREMY COLLIER'S attack of the stage: Congreve's reply. Congreve's Way of the World. § 9. THOMAS OTWAY. The Orphan and Venice Preserved.

§ 10. NATHANIEL LEE. THOMAS SOUTHERNE. Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage, and Oroonoko. JOHN CROWNE. § 11. NICHOLAS ROWE.

Jane Shore and the Fair Penitent. § 12. MRS. APHRA BEHN, THOMAS SHADWELL, and GEORGE LILLO. Lillo's George Barnwell, the Fatal Curiosity, and Arden of Faversham. § 13. Character of English poetry of this era. Noble poets: EARL of ROSCOMMON. EARL of ROCHESTER. SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. DUKE of BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. EARL of DORSET. § 14. JOHN PHILIPS and JOHN POMFRET

§ 1. In a previous chapter I have endeavoured to sketch the immense revolution in dramatic literature, which is exemplified in the contrast between the age of Elizabeth and that of the Restoration. The theatre of the latter period, representing, as the theatre always must, the prevailing tone of sentiment and of society, is marked by the profound corruption which distinguishes the reign of Charles II., and which was the natural reaction after the strained morality of the Puritan dominion. The new drama differed from the old not only in its moral tone, but quite as widely in its literary form. The aim of the great writers who are identified with the dawn of our national stage was to delineate nature and passion; and therefore, as nature is multiform, they admitted into their serious plays comic scenes and characters, as they admitted elevated feelings and language into their comedies. But at the Restoration the artificial distinction between tragedy and comedy was strongly marked, and generally maintained with the same severity as upon the stage of France, which had become the chief model of imitation. In the place of the Romantic Drama arose the exaggerated, heroic and stilted tragedy on the one hand, and on the other the Comedy of artificial life, which, drawing its materials not from nature but from