‘Duke.Deceived and disappointed vain desires!Why laugh I not, and ridicule myself?’Tis still, and cold, and nothing in the airBut an old grey twilight, or of eve or mornI know not which, dim as futurity,And sad and hoary as the ghostly pastFills up the space. Hush! not a wind is there,Not a cloud sails over the battlements,Not a bell tolls the hour. Is there an hour?Or is not all gone by which here did hiveOf men and their life’s ways? Could I but hearThe ticking of a clock, or someone breathing,Or e’en a cricket’s chirping, or the gratingOf the old gates amid the marble tombs,I should be sure that this was still the world.Hark! Hark! Doth nothing stir?No light, and still no light, besides this ghostThat mocks the dawn, unaltered? Still no sound?No voice of man? No cry of beast? No rustleOf any moving creature? And sure I feelThat I remain the same: no more round blood dropsRoll joyously along my pulseless veins:The air I seem to breathe is still the same:And the great dreadful thought that now comes o’er meMust remain ever as it is, unchanged.This moment doth endure for evermore;Eternity hath overshadowed time;And I alone am left of all that lived.’Death’s Jest Book, act iii., sc. 3.
‘Duke.Deceived and disappointed vain desires!Why laugh I not, and ridicule myself?’Tis still, and cold, and nothing in the airBut an old grey twilight, or of eve or mornI know not which, dim as futurity,And sad and hoary as the ghostly pastFills up the space. Hush! not a wind is there,Not a cloud sails over the battlements,Not a bell tolls the hour. Is there an hour?Or is not all gone by which here did hiveOf men and their life’s ways? Could I but hearThe ticking of a clock, or someone breathing,Or e’en a cricket’s chirping, or the gratingOf the old gates amid the marble tombs,I should be sure that this was still the world.Hark! Hark! Doth nothing stir?No light, and still no light, besides this ghostThat mocks the dawn, unaltered? Still no sound?No voice of man? No cry of beast? No rustleOf any moving creature? And sure I feelThat I remain the same: no more round blood dropsRoll joyously along my pulseless veins:The air I seem to breathe is still the same:And the great dreadful thought that now comes o’er meMust remain ever as it is, unchanged.This moment doth endure for evermore;Eternity hath overshadowed time;And I alone am left of all that lived.’
‘Duke.Deceived and disappointed vain desires!Why laugh I not, and ridicule myself?’Tis still, and cold, and nothing in the airBut an old grey twilight, or of eve or mornI know not which, dim as futurity,And sad and hoary as the ghostly pastFills up the space. Hush! not a wind is there,Not a cloud sails over the battlements,Not a bell tolls the hour. Is there an hour?Or is not all gone by which here did hiveOf men and their life’s ways? Could I but hearThe ticking of a clock, or someone breathing,Or e’en a cricket’s chirping, or the gratingOf the old gates amid the marble tombs,I should be sure that this was still the world.Hark! Hark! Doth nothing stir?No light, and still no light, besides this ghostThat mocks the dawn, unaltered? Still no sound?No voice of man? No cry of beast? No rustleOf any moving creature? And sure I feelThat I remain the same: no more round blood dropsRoll joyously along my pulseless veins:The air I seem to breathe is still the same:And the great dreadful thought that now comes o’er meMust remain ever as it is, unchanged.This moment doth endure for evermore;Eternity hath overshadowed time;And I alone am left of all that lived.’
Death’s Jest Book, act iii., sc. 3.
The writer of these lines might have been a great tragic poet, if he could have achieved the construction of a coherent plot. Congreve might have been a greater, but for the conventions of an age that required hisdramatis personaeto be remote by a thousand years or a thousand miles.
The dazzle of Congreve’s wit has perhaps blinded critics to his more serious powers, and it may be that its brilliancy has been even exaggerated. What is chiefly admirable is perhaps not so much the occasional flashes and strokes, felicitous as they are, as the unflagging verve, energy, and gaiety. His plays are not of the kind that keep the audience in a roar from first to last, but they never cease to stimulate the spirits; the fire does not always blaze, but it never burns low: there is not a dull scene, or a tiresome or useless character. The general tone of good breeding, if it does not purify the pervading atmosphere of profligacy, at any rate prevents it from becoming offensive. In verbal impropriety anddouble entendreCongreve is even worse than Wycherley, but his plays are far from giving the same impression of a thoroughly obnoxious state of society. It is true that the pursuit of women seems the sole business of the men, and the pursuit of men the business of half the women; but the universal passion is so pleasantly variegated with extraneous humours and oddities that it is farfrom producing the monotony of a modern French novel. Thus, there is an amourette between Brisk and Lady Froth inThe Double Dealer, but the pair are æsthetic as well as amorous, and the blue-stocking is more conspicuous than the unfaithful wife. The scene where Brisk corrects Lady Froth’s poetry, imitated but not servilely copied from one inLes Femmes Savantes, is a good specimen of the humour and sparkle of Congreve’s dialogue:
‘Lady Froth.Then you think that episode between Susan, the dairy-maid, and our coachman, is not amiss; you know I may suppose the dairy in town as well as in the country.Brisk.Incomparable, let me perish!—But then being an heroic poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? charioteer sounds great; besides, your ladyship’s coachman having a red face, and you comparing him to the sun; and you know the sun is called heaven’s charioteer.Lady Froth.Oh, infinitely better! I am extremely beholden to you for the hint; stay, we’ll read over those half a score lines again. [Pulls out a paper.] Let me see here, you know what goes before,—the comparison, you know.[Reads.For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say—Brisk.I’m afraid that simile won’t do in wet weather;—because you say the sun shines every day.Lady Froth.No, for the sun it won’t, but it will do for the coachman; for you know there’s more occasion for a coach in wet weather.Brisk.Right, right, that saves all.Lady Froth.Then, I don’t say the sun shines all the day, but that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day too, you know, though we don’t see him.Brisk.Right, but the vulgar will never comprehend that.Lady Froth.Well, you shall hear.—Let me see.[Reads.For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say,He shows his drunken fiery face,Just as the sun does, more or less.Brisk.That’s right, all’s well, all’s well!—More or less.Lady Froth.[Reads.]And when at night his labour’s done,Then too, like heaven’s charioteer the sun—Ay, charioteer does better.Into the dairy he descends,And there his whipping and his driving ends;There’s he’s secure from danger of a bilk,His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so—Brisk.Incomparably well and proper, egad!—But I have one exception to make:—don’t you thinkbilk(I know it’s good rhyme), but don’t you thinkbilkandfaretoo like a hackney-coachman?Lady Froth.I swear and vow, I am afraid so.—And yet our Jehu was a hackney-coachman when my lord took him.Brisk.Was he? I’m answered, if Jehu was a hackney-coachman.—You may put that in the marginal notes though, to prevent criticism.—Only mark it with a small asterism, and say, Jehu was formerly a hackney-coachman.Lady Froth.I will; you’d oblige me extremely to write notes to the whole poem.Brisk.With all my heart and soul, and proud of the vast honour, let me perish!’
‘Lady Froth.Then you think that episode between Susan, the dairy-maid, and our coachman, is not amiss; you know I may suppose the dairy in town as well as in the country.
Brisk.Incomparable, let me perish!—But then being an heroic poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? charioteer sounds great; besides, your ladyship’s coachman having a red face, and you comparing him to the sun; and you know the sun is called heaven’s charioteer.
Lady Froth.Oh, infinitely better! I am extremely beholden to you for the hint; stay, we’ll read over those half a score lines again. [Pulls out a paper.] Let me see here, you know what goes before,—the comparison, you know.
[Reads.
For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say—
For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say—
For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say—
Brisk.I’m afraid that simile won’t do in wet weather;—because you say the sun shines every day.
Lady Froth.No, for the sun it won’t, but it will do for the coachman; for you know there’s more occasion for a coach in wet weather.
Brisk.Right, right, that saves all.
Lady Froth.Then, I don’t say the sun shines all the day, but that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day too, you know, though we don’t see him.
Brisk.Right, but the vulgar will never comprehend that.
Lady Froth.Well, you shall hear.—Let me see.
[Reads.
For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say,He shows his drunken fiery face,Just as the sun does, more or less.
For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say,He shows his drunken fiery face,Just as the sun does, more or less.
For as the sun shines every day,So, of our coachman I may say,He shows his drunken fiery face,Just as the sun does, more or less.
Brisk.That’s right, all’s well, all’s well!—More or less.
Lady Froth.[Reads.]
And when at night his labour’s done,Then too, like heaven’s charioteer the sun—
And when at night his labour’s done,Then too, like heaven’s charioteer the sun—
And when at night his labour’s done,Then too, like heaven’s charioteer the sun—
Ay, charioteer does better.
Into the dairy he descends,And there his whipping and his driving ends;There’s he’s secure from danger of a bilk,His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.
Into the dairy he descends,And there his whipping and his driving ends;There’s he’s secure from danger of a bilk,His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.
Into the dairy he descends,And there his whipping and his driving ends;There’s he’s secure from danger of a bilk,His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.
For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so—
Brisk.Incomparably well and proper, egad!—But I have one exception to make:—don’t you thinkbilk(I know it’s good rhyme), but don’t you thinkbilkandfaretoo like a hackney-coachman?
Lady Froth.I swear and vow, I am afraid so.—And yet our Jehu was a hackney-coachman when my lord took him.
Brisk.Was he? I’m answered, if Jehu was a hackney-coachman.—You may put that in the marginal notes though, to prevent criticism.—Only mark it with a small asterism, and say, Jehu was formerly a hackney-coachman.
Lady Froth.I will; you’d oblige me extremely to write notes to the whole poem.
Brisk.With all my heart and soul, and proud of the vast honour, let me perish!’
Congreve excels not only in dialogue, but in painting a character by a single speech. How thoroughly we realize the inward and outward man of old Foresight the omen-monger, from a single passage inLove for Love:
‘Nurse.Pray heaven send your worship good luck! marry and amen with all my heart; for you have put on one stocking with the wrong side outward.Fore.Ha! hm? faith and troth I’m glad of it. And so I have; that may be good luck in troth, in troth it may, very good luck:nay I have had some omens: I got out of bed backwards too this morning, without premeditation; pretty good that too; but then I stumbled coming down stairs, and met a weasel; bad omens these, some bad, some good, our lives are chequered; mirth and sorrow, want and plenty, night and day, make up our time. But in troth I am pleased at my stocking; very well pleased at my stocking.’
‘Nurse.Pray heaven send your worship good luck! marry and amen with all my heart; for you have put on one stocking with the wrong side outward.
Fore.Ha! hm? faith and troth I’m glad of it. And so I have; that may be good luck in troth, in troth it may, very good luck:nay I have had some omens: I got out of bed backwards too this morning, without premeditation; pretty good that too; but then I stumbled coming down stairs, and met a weasel; bad omens these, some bad, some good, our lives are chequered; mirth and sorrow, want and plenty, night and day, make up our time. But in troth I am pleased at my stocking; very well pleased at my stocking.’
Or Mr. Bluffe, themiles gloriosusofThe Old Bachelor:
‘You must know, sir, I was resident in Flanders the last campaign, had a small part there, but no matter for that. Perhaps, sir, there was scarce anything of moment done but an humble servant of yours that shall be nameless, was an eye-witness of—I won’t say had the greatest share in it; though I might say that too, since I name nobody, you know. Well, Mr. Sharper, would you think it? in all this time this rascally gazette writer never so much as once mentioned me—not once, by the wars!—took no more notice than as if Nol. Bluffe had not been in the land of the living!Sharper.Strange!Bluffe.Ay, ay, no matter.—You see, Mr. Sharper, that after all I am content to retire—live a private person—Scipio and others have done it.’
‘You must know, sir, I was resident in Flanders the last campaign, had a small part there, but no matter for that. Perhaps, sir, there was scarce anything of moment done but an humble servant of yours that shall be nameless, was an eye-witness of—I won’t say had the greatest share in it; though I might say that too, since I name nobody, you know. Well, Mr. Sharper, would you think it? in all this time this rascally gazette writer never so much as once mentioned me—not once, by the wars!—took no more notice than as if Nol. Bluffe had not been in the land of the living!
Sharper.Strange!
Bluffe.Ay, ay, no matter.—You see, Mr. Sharper, that after all I am content to retire—live a private person—Scipio and others have done it.’
Vanbrugh has less individuality than his eminent contemporaries, and has consequently produced less impression than they upon the public mind, has added fewer typical characters to comedy, and stands some steps nigher to oblivion. Yet he is their equal invis comica, and their superior in stage workmanship. ‘He is no writer at all,’ says Hazlitt, ‘as to mere authorship; but he makes up for it by a prodigious fund of comic invention and ludicrous description, bordering upon caricature. He has none of Congreve’s graceful refinement, and as little of Wycherley’s serious manner and studious insight into the springs of character; but his exhibition of it in dramatic contrast and unlooked-for situations, where the different parties playupon one another’s failings, and into one another’s hands, keeping up the jest like a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and urging it to the utmost verge of breathless extravagance, in the mere eagerness of the fray, is beyond that of any other of our writers.’ In Hazlitt’s opinion, Vanbrugh did not bestow much pains upon the construction of his pieces, and their excellent dramatic effect is mainly to be attributed to his promptness in seizing upon the hints for powerful situations which continually arose as he went along. He has nothing of the passion which sometimes raises Congreve so near to the confines of tragedy, nor has he the airy gaiety of Farquhar; but his animal spirits are abundant and unforced, and his humour has a true Flemish exuberance. His characters are always lively and well discriminated, but the only type he can be said to have created is the model fop, Lord Foppington inThe Relapse, and even he is partly borrowed from Etheredge’s Sir Fopling Flutter. He is nevertheless a most perfect portrait, and gives real literary distinction to what would otherwise have been a mere comedy of intrigue. The powerful though disagreeable character of Sir John Brute lends force toThe Provoked Wife; and the unfinishedJourney to Londonis grounded on an idea which might have been very fruitful, the country senator who has gone into Parliament as a speculation, but who, upon taking up his residence in London, finds that he loses more by the extravagance of his wife than he can gain by the prostitution of his vote. Vanbrugh’s other plays are mere comedies of intrigue, written without moral or immoral purpose for the sake of amusement, of which they are abundantly prolific for readers not repelled by a disregard of virtue so open and unblushing that, being too gay for cynicism, it almost seems innocence. The scene between Flippanta and her pupil inThe Confederacyis anexcellent specimen of Vanbrugh’s spirited comedy. It might be headed,Malitia supplet aetatem.
‘Flip.Nay, if you can bear it so, you are not to be pitied so much as I thought.Cor.Not pitied! Why, is it not a miserable thing for such a young creature as I am should be kept in perpetual solitude, with no other company but a parcel of old fumbling masters, to teach me geography, arithmetic, philosophy, and a thousand useless things? Fine entertainment, indeed, for a young maid at sixteen! Methinks one’s time might be better employed.Flip.Those things will improve your wit.Cor.Fiddle, faddle! han’t I wit enough already? My mother-in-law has learned none of this trumpery, and is not she as happy as the day is long?Flip.Then you envy her I find?Cor.And well I may. Does she not do what she has a mind to, in spite of her husband’s teeth?Flip.[Aside.] Look you there now! If she has not already conceived that as the supreme blessing of life!Cor.I’ll tell you what, Flippanta; if my mother-in-law would but stand by me a little, and encourage me, and let me keep her company, I’d rebel against my father to-morrow, and throw all my books in the fire. Why, he can’t touch a groat of my portion; do you know that, Flippanta!Flip.[Aside.] So—I shall spoil her! Pray Heaven the girl don’t debauch me!Cor.Look you: in short, he may think what he pleases, he may think himself wise; but thoughts are free, and I may think in my turn. I’m but a girl, ’tis true, and a fool too, if you’ll believe him; but let him know, a foolish girl may make a wise man’s heart ache; so he had as good be quiet.—Now it’s out.Flip.Very well, I love to see a young woman have spirit, it’s a sign she’ll come to something.Cor.Ah, Flippanta! if you would but encourage me, you’d find me quite another thing. I’m a devilish girl in the bottom; I wish you’d but let me make one amongst you.Flip.That never can be till you are married. Come, examineyour strength a little. Do you think you durst venture upon a husband?Cor.A husband! Why, a—if you would but encourage me. Come, Flippanta, be a true friend now. I’ll give you advice when I have got a little more experience. Do you in your conscience and soul think I am old enough to be married?Flip.Old enough! why, you are sixteen, are you not?Cor.Sixteen! I am sixteen, two months, and odd days, woman. I keep an exact account.Flip.The deuce you are!Cor.Why, do you then truly and sincerely think I am old enough?Flip.I do, upon my faith, child.Cor.Why, then, to deal as fairly with you, Flippanta, as you do with me, I have thought so any time these three years.Flip.Now I find you have more wit than ever I thought you had; and to show you what an opinion I have of your discretion, I’ll show you a thing I thought to have thrown in the fire.Cor.What is it, for Jupiter’s sake?Flip.Something will make your heart chuck within you.Cor.My dear Flippanta!Flip.What do you think it is?Cor.I don’t know, nor I don’t care, but I’m mad to have it.Flip.It’s a four-cornered thing.Cor.What, like a cardinal’s cap?Flip.No, ’tis worth a whole conclave of ’em. How do you like it?[Showing the letter.Cor.O Lard, a letter! Is there ever a token in it?Flip.Yes, and a precious one too. There’s a handsome young gentleman’s heart.Cor.A handsome young gentleman’s heart! [Aside.] Nay, then, it’s time to look grave.Flip.There.Cor.I shan’t touch it.Flip.What’s the matter now?Cor.I shan’t receive it.Flip.Sure you jest.Cor.You’ll find I don’t. I understand myself better than to take letters when I don’t know who they are from.Flip.I’m afraid I commended your wit too soon.Cor.’Tis all one, I shan’t touch it, unless I know who it comes from.Flip.Heyday, open it and you’ll see.Cor.Indeed I shall not.Flip.Well—then I must return it where I had it.Cor.That won’t serve your turn, madam. My father must have an account of this.Flip.Sure you are not in earnest?Cor.You’ll find I am.Flip.So, here’s fine work! This ’tis to deal with girls before they come to know the distinction of sexes!Cor.Confess who you had it from, and perhaps, for this once, I mayn’t tell my father.Flip.Why then, since it must out, ’twas the Colonel. But why are you so scrupulous, madam?Cor.Because if it had come from anybody else—I would not have given a farthing for it.[Snatching it eagerly out of her hand.’
‘Flip.Nay, if you can bear it so, you are not to be pitied so much as I thought.
Cor.Not pitied! Why, is it not a miserable thing for such a young creature as I am should be kept in perpetual solitude, with no other company but a parcel of old fumbling masters, to teach me geography, arithmetic, philosophy, and a thousand useless things? Fine entertainment, indeed, for a young maid at sixteen! Methinks one’s time might be better employed.
Flip.Those things will improve your wit.
Cor.Fiddle, faddle! han’t I wit enough already? My mother-in-law has learned none of this trumpery, and is not she as happy as the day is long?
Flip.Then you envy her I find?
Cor.And well I may. Does she not do what she has a mind to, in spite of her husband’s teeth?
Flip.[Aside.] Look you there now! If she has not already conceived that as the supreme blessing of life!
Cor.I’ll tell you what, Flippanta; if my mother-in-law would but stand by me a little, and encourage me, and let me keep her company, I’d rebel against my father to-morrow, and throw all my books in the fire. Why, he can’t touch a groat of my portion; do you know that, Flippanta!
Flip.[Aside.] So—I shall spoil her! Pray Heaven the girl don’t debauch me!
Cor.Look you: in short, he may think what he pleases, he may think himself wise; but thoughts are free, and I may think in my turn. I’m but a girl, ’tis true, and a fool too, if you’ll believe him; but let him know, a foolish girl may make a wise man’s heart ache; so he had as good be quiet.—Now it’s out.
Flip.Very well, I love to see a young woman have spirit, it’s a sign she’ll come to something.
Cor.Ah, Flippanta! if you would but encourage me, you’d find me quite another thing. I’m a devilish girl in the bottom; I wish you’d but let me make one amongst you.
Flip.That never can be till you are married. Come, examineyour strength a little. Do you think you durst venture upon a husband?
Cor.A husband! Why, a—if you would but encourage me. Come, Flippanta, be a true friend now. I’ll give you advice when I have got a little more experience. Do you in your conscience and soul think I am old enough to be married?
Flip.Old enough! why, you are sixteen, are you not?
Cor.Sixteen! I am sixteen, two months, and odd days, woman. I keep an exact account.
Flip.The deuce you are!
Cor.Why, do you then truly and sincerely think I am old enough?
Flip.I do, upon my faith, child.
Cor.Why, then, to deal as fairly with you, Flippanta, as you do with me, I have thought so any time these three years.
Flip.Now I find you have more wit than ever I thought you had; and to show you what an opinion I have of your discretion, I’ll show you a thing I thought to have thrown in the fire.
Cor.What is it, for Jupiter’s sake?
Flip.Something will make your heart chuck within you.
Cor.My dear Flippanta!
Flip.What do you think it is?
Cor.I don’t know, nor I don’t care, but I’m mad to have it.
Flip.It’s a four-cornered thing.
Cor.What, like a cardinal’s cap?
Flip.No, ’tis worth a whole conclave of ’em. How do you like it?
[Showing the letter.
Cor.O Lard, a letter! Is there ever a token in it?
Flip.Yes, and a precious one too. There’s a handsome young gentleman’s heart.
Cor.A handsome young gentleman’s heart! [Aside.] Nay, then, it’s time to look grave.
Flip.There.
Cor.I shan’t touch it.
Flip.What’s the matter now?
Cor.I shan’t receive it.
Flip.Sure you jest.
Cor.You’ll find I don’t. I understand myself better than to take letters when I don’t know who they are from.
Flip.I’m afraid I commended your wit too soon.
Cor.’Tis all one, I shan’t touch it, unless I know who it comes from.
Flip.Heyday, open it and you’ll see.
Cor.Indeed I shall not.
Flip.Well—then I must return it where I had it.
Cor.That won’t serve your turn, madam. My father must have an account of this.
Flip.Sure you are not in earnest?
Cor.You’ll find I am.
Flip.So, here’s fine work! This ’tis to deal with girls before they come to know the distinction of sexes!
Cor.Confess who you had it from, and perhaps, for this once, I mayn’t tell my father.
Flip.Why then, since it must out, ’twas the Colonel. But why are you so scrupulous, madam?
Cor.Because if it had come from anybody else—I would not have given a farthing for it.
[Snatching it eagerly out of her hand.’
Farquhar has what Vanbrugh wants—individuality. He seems to identify himself with his favourite characters, the heedless, dissolute, but gentlemanly and good-hearted sparks about town whom he so delights to portray, and hence wins a firmer place in our affections than his wittier and in every way stronger rival, who might have been a comic automaton for any idea of his personality that we are able to form. Whether the inevitable conception of Farquhar is really correct may be doubted; it is not in harmony with the few particulars which we possess of his manners and personal appearance. While reading him, nevertheless, one feels no doubt of the applicability to the author of the character of his Sir Harry Wildair, ‘entertaining to others, and easy to himself, turning all passion into gaiety of humour.’ The plays answer the descriptionof the personage; they are lively, rattling, entertaining, and the humour is certainly much in excess of the passion. Serjeant Kite, inThe Recruiting Officer, has become proverbial, otherwise no character has been recognized as an absolute creation, though almost all are natural and unaffected.The Beaux’ Stratagem, his last play, is by common consent his best; it is assuredly admirable, from the truth and variety of the characters, and the pervading atmosphere of adventurous gaiety. The separation between Mr. and Mrs. Sullen is a good specimen of Farquhar’svis comica:
‘Mrs. Sul.Hold, gentlemen, all things here must move by consent, compulsion would spoil us; let my dear and I talk the matter over, and you shall judge it between us.Squire Sul.Let me know first who are to be our judges. Pray, sir, who are you?Sir Chas.I am Sir Charles Freeman, come to take away your wife.Squire Sul.And you, good sir?Aim.Charles Viscount Aimwell, come to take away your sister.Squire Sul.And you, pray, sir?Arch.Francis Archer, esquire, come——Squire Sul.To take away my mother, I hope. Gentlemen, you’re heartily welcome. I never met with three more obliging people since I was born!—And now, my dear, if you please, you shall have the first word.Arch.And the last, for five pound!Mrs. Sul.Spouse!Squire Sul.Rib!Mrs. Sul.How long have we been married?Squire Sul.By the almanac, fourteen months; but by my account, fourteen years.Mrs. Sul.’Tis thereabout by my reckoning.Count Bel.Garzoon, their account will agree.Mrs. Sul.Pray, spouse, what did you marry for?Squire Sul.To get an heir to my estate.Sir Chas.And have you succeeded?Squire Sul.No.Arch.The condition fails of his side.—Pray, madam, what did you marry for?Mrs. Sul.To support the weakness of my sex by the strength of his, and to enjoy the pleasures of an agreeable society.Sir Chas.Are your expectations answered?Mrs. Sul.No.Count Bel.A clear case! a clear case!Sir Chas.What are the bars to your mutual contentment?Mrs. Sul.In the first place, I can’t drink ale with him.Squire Sul.Nor can I drink tea with her.Mrs. Sul.I can’t hunt with you.Squire Sul.Nor can I dance with you.Mrs. Sul.I hate cocking and racing.Squire Sul.And I abhor ombre and piquet.Mrs. Sul.Your silence is intolerable.Squire Sul.Your prating is worse.Mrs. Sul.Have we not been a perpetual offence to each other? a gnawing vulture at the heart?Squire Sul.A frightful goblin to the sight?Mrs. Sul.A porcupine to the feeling?Squire Sul.Perpetual wormwood to the taste?Mrs. Sul.Is there on earth a thing we could agree in?Squire Sul.Yes—to part.Mrs. Sul.With all my heart.Squire Sul.Your hand.Mrs. Sul.Here.Squire Sul.These hands joined us, these shall part us.—Away!Mrs. Sul.North.Squire Sul.South.Mrs. Sul.East.Squire Sul.West—far as the poles asunder.Count Bel.Begar, the ceremony be vera pretty!’
‘Mrs. Sul.Hold, gentlemen, all things here must move by consent, compulsion would spoil us; let my dear and I talk the matter over, and you shall judge it between us.
Squire Sul.Let me know first who are to be our judges. Pray, sir, who are you?
Sir Chas.I am Sir Charles Freeman, come to take away your wife.
Squire Sul.And you, good sir?
Aim.Charles Viscount Aimwell, come to take away your sister.
Squire Sul.And you, pray, sir?
Arch.Francis Archer, esquire, come——
Squire Sul.To take away my mother, I hope. Gentlemen, you’re heartily welcome. I never met with three more obliging people since I was born!—And now, my dear, if you please, you shall have the first word.
Arch.And the last, for five pound!
Mrs. Sul.Spouse!
Squire Sul.Rib!
Mrs. Sul.How long have we been married?
Squire Sul.By the almanac, fourteen months; but by my account, fourteen years.
Mrs. Sul.’Tis thereabout by my reckoning.
Count Bel.Garzoon, their account will agree.
Mrs. Sul.Pray, spouse, what did you marry for?
Squire Sul.To get an heir to my estate.
Sir Chas.And have you succeeded?
Squire Sul.No.
Arch.The condition fails of his side.—Pray, madam, what did you marry for?
Mrs. Sul.To support the weakness of my sex by the strength of his, and to enjoy the pleasures of an agreeable society.
Sir Chas.Are your expectations answered?
Mrs. Sul.No.
Count Bel.A clear case! a clear case!
Sir Chas.What are the bars to your mutual contentment?
Mrs. Sul.In the first place, I can’t drink ale with him.
Squire Sul.Nor can I drink tea with her.
Mrs. Sul.I can’t hunt with you.
Squire Sul.Nor can I dance with you.
Mrs. Sul.I hate cocking and racing.
Squire Sul.And I abhor ombre and piquet.
Mrs. Sul.Your silence is intolerable.
Squire Sul.Your prating is worse.
Mrs. Sul.Have we not been a perpetual offence to each other? a gnawing vulture at the heart?
Squire Sul.A frightful goblin to the sight?
Mrs. Sul.A porcupine to the feeling?
Squire Sul.Perpetual wormwood to the taste?
Mrs. Sul.Is there on earth a thing we could agree in?
Squire Sul.Yes—to part.
Mrs. Sul.With all my heart.
Squire Sul.Your hand.
Mrs. Sul.Here.
Squire Sul.These hands joined us, these shall part us.—Away!
Mrs. Sul.North.
Squire Sul.South.
Mrs. Sul.East.
Squire Sul.West—far as the poles asunder.
Count Bel.Begar, the ceremony be vera pretty!’
Farquhar is fuller of allusions to contemporary eventsand humours than any of the other dramatists, and these are sometimes very happy; as when a promising scheme is said to be in danger of ‘going souse into the water, like the Eddystone lighthouse,’ or when an alarm is given by shouting, ‘Thieves! thieves! murder!popery!’ Another peculiarity of all these dramatists, but especially Farquhar, is the constant use in serious passages of a broken blank verse, which continually seems upon the point of becoming regular ten-syllabled iambic, but never maintains this elevation for any considerable space. The extremely powerful scene between the two Fainalls, in Congreve’sLove for Love, for example, which borders closely upon tragedy, is all but regular blank verse, which, if perfectly finished, would be much better than the verse ofThe Mourning Bride. It is difficult to determine whether this was intentional or accidental. Possibly the exigencies of the performers had something to do with it. It is by no means unlikely that prose, as well as verse, was then declaimed with more attention to rhythm than is now the custom. In estimating the merits of these dramas it must never be forgotten, as a point in their favour, that they were written for the stage, and that success in the closet was quite a secondary consideration with the authors; on the other hand, that they had the advantage of being produced when the histrionic art of England was probably at its zenith.
This notice of the later Restoration comedy may be completed by the mention of three ladies who cultivated it with success during the latter part of the seventeenth century. How much of this success, in the case of one of them, was due to merit, and how much to indecency, is a difficult, though not in every sense of the term a nice or delicate question. Despite the offensiveness of her writings, Aphra Behn (1640-1689), whose maiden name was Johnson, is personally a sympathetic figure. She was born in 1640, and as a girl went out with her family to Surinam, then an English possession. She there made the acquaintance of the Indian chief Oroonoko and his bride Imoinda, afterwards celebrated in the novel by her upon which Southern founded his popular play. Returning to England, she married a Dutch merchant of the name of Behn, and after his death was sent as a spy to Antwerp. A young Dutchman to whom she was engaged died; she was wrecked and nearly drowned upon her return to England; and, probably from necessity, as the English government appears to have refused to recompense or even to reimburse her, turned novelist and playwright. Her novels will be noticed in another place; her eighteen plays have, with few exceptions, sufficient merit to entitle her to a respectable place among the dramatists of her age, and sufficient indelicacy to be unreadable in this. It may well be believed, on the authority of a female friend, that the authoress ‘had wit, humour, good-nature, and judgment; was mistress of all the pleasing arts of conversation; was a woman of sense, andconsequentlya woman of pleasure.’ She was buried in Westminster Abbey, but not in Poets’ Corner. The plays of Mrs. Manley (1672-1724), though moderately successful, need not detain us here, but we shall have to speak of her as a writer of fiction. She was the daughter of a Cavalier knight, but became the mistress of Alderman Barber, and was concerned in several doubtful transactions. Swift, nevertheless, speaks of her as a good person ‘for one of her sort’—fat and forty, it seems, butnotfair. Mrs. Susannah Centlivre (1667-1723) appears to have had her share of adventures in her youth, but survived to contract one of the most respectable unions imaginable, namely, with the queen’s cook. She was a wholesale adapter from the French, and her lively comediespossess little literary merit, but so much dramatic instinct that three of them,The Busy Body,The Wonder, andA Bold Stroke for a Wife, remained long upon the list of acting plays, and might be represented even now.
The age of the Restoration possessed many men qualified to shine in criticism, but their acumen is in general only indicated by casual remarks, and, setting aside the metrical prolusions of Roscommon and Sheffield, nearly all the serious criticism it has bequeathed to us proceeds from the pen of Dryden. No other of our poets except Coleridge and Wordsworth has given us anything so critically valuable, but Dryden’s principal service is one which they could not render; for, even if their style had equalled his—and this would be too much to say even of Wordsworth’s—it could not have exerted the same wide and salutary influence. Dryden is entitled to be considered as the great reformer of English prose, the writer in whom the sound principles of the Restoration were above all others impersonated, and who above all others led the way to that clear, sane, and balanced method of writing which it was the especial mission of Restoration literature to introduce. We need only compare his style with Milton’s to be sensible of the enormous progress in the direction of perspicuity and general utility. Milton is a far more eloquent writer, but his style is totally unfit for the close reasoning and accurate investigation which the pressure of politics and the development of scienceand philosophy were soon to require, and the rest of the prosaists of the time are, with few exceptions, either too pedantic or too commonplace. Dryden is lucid, easy, familiar, yet he can be august and splendid on occasion, and if he does not emulate Milton’s dithyrambic, the dignity of English prose loses nothing in his hands. Take the opening of hisDialogue on Dramatic Poesy:
‘It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war, when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations, and the riches of the universe: while these vast floating bodies, on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our countrymen, under the happy conduct of his royal highness, went breaking, by little and little, into the line of the enemies; the noise of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city, so that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of the event, which they knew was then deciding, every one went following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the town almost empty, some took towards the park, some across the river, others down it; all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.‘Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander, to be in company together; three of them persons whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town; and whom I have chose to hide under these borrowed names, that they may not suffer by so ill a relation as I am going to make of their discourse.‘Taking then a barge, which a servant of Lisideius had provided for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them that great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what they desired: after which, having disengaged themselves from many vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up the passage towards Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently, and then, every one favouring his own curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived the air to break about them like thenoise of distant thunder, or of swallows in a chimney:[8]those little undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror, which they had betwixt the fleets. After they had attentively listened till such time as the sound by little and little went from them, Eugenius, lifting up his head, and taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation’s victory: adding, that we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, that we might hear no more of that noise, which was now leaving the English coast.’
‘It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war, when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations, and the riches of the universe: while these vast floating bodies, on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our countrymen, under the happy conduct of his royal highness, went breaking, by little and little, into the line of the enemies; the noise of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city, so that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of the event, which they knew was then deciding, every one went following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the town almost empty, some took towards the park, some across the river, others down it; all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.
‘Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander, to be in company together; three of them persons whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town; and whom I have chose to hide under these borrowed names, that they may not suffer by so ill a relation as I am going to make of their discourse.
‘Taking then a barge, which a servant of Lisideius had provided for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them that great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what they desired: after which, having disengaged themselves from many vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up the passage towards Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently, and then, every one favouring his own curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived the air to break about them like thenoise of distant thunder, or of swallows in a chimney:[8]those little undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror, which they had betwixt the fleets. After they had attentively listened till such time as the sound by little and little went from them, Eugenius, lifting up his head, and taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation’s victory: adding, that we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, that we might hear no more of that noise, which was now leaving the English coast.’
This fine induction can hardly have formed part of the original essay, which, Dryden tells us, was written in the country in 1665, since the naval battle, which was fought on June 3rd, 1665, is described as having taken place in ‘the first summer of the late war.’ One extraordinary passage must have been left uncorrected by oversight, at least we cannot well suppose that Dryden would have printed ‘Blank verse is acknowledged to be too low for a poem’ after the appearance ofParadise Lost, which was published on the day after the conclusion of the Peace of Breda, not then known in England. The essay has two objects not very compatible: to defend the English stage against the French, and to advocate the use of rhyme in tragedy, which necessarily gives the piece a French air, and makes it appear imitative, when it is in truth original. Dryden points out with considerable force the restrictions which French dramatists of the classical school impose upon themselves by servile adherence to the unities of time and place, and in a well-known passage which does honour to his taste sets Shakespeare above Ben Jonson. His criticism ofTroilus and Cressida, in his essay onThe Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy(1679), is instructive asillustrating by force of contrast that enlarged view of Shakespeare for which we are indebted to Goethe and Coleridge. He justly censuresTroilus and Cressidaas a play; it does not occur to him that Shakespeare may have intended a satire. All his essays, which consist principally of prefaces and dedications to his own works, are worth reading; none more so than his defence of Virgil in the dedication to his translation of his poems, and the remarks on Horace and Juvenal in hisEssay on Satire. Everywhere we must admire his sanity, penetration, and massive common sense; his chief defects are conventional prejudice, negligence (as when he ascribes the invention of blank verse to Shakespeare), and the parade of second-hand learning. It may be said of his criticisms, as truly as of his poems or plays, that his merits are his own, his faults those of his age.
Another critic of the stage only deserves notice in this capacity from his connection with Dryden. Thomas Rymer (1639-1714) will be mentioned again as a meritorious antiquary. As a critic he is remarkable for having by hisTragedies of the Last Age(1673) drawn some judicious remarks from Dryden, and for having analyzedOthelloas a pattern of a bad play. He has consequently been unanimously hooted by his countrymen, for it passes belief that Pope should have praised him to Spence, though Spence affirms it. It was his misfortune to be an Englishman; in France at the time his views would have been thought very correct; in fact, he criticises Shakespeare much in the style of Voltaire. He is a votary of decorum and dignity, and would no more than Voltaire have let a mouse into a tragedy. He discusses with imperturbable gravity, ‘Who and who may kill one another with decency?’ and decides, ‘In poetry no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him. Poetical decency will not sufferdeath to be dealt to each other by such persons, whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together.’ And Rymer would have been content to have dwelt in such decencies for ever.
Jeremy Collier, a Nonjuring clergyman (1650-1726), attained fame, not as the advocate of decencies, but of decency. HisShort View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage(1698) occasioned a great sensation, and was efficacious in abating the evils against which it was directed, although it is probable that Addison’s mild rebuke and better example accomplished even more. As the adversary of men of wit and genius, Collier has become obnoxious to their representatives, and has been unfairly reviled as a sour fanatic. In fact he is very moderate, admits that the stage may be a valuable medium of instruction, and only denounces its abuse. Scott and Macaulay have done him justice, and Mr. Gosse gives an excellent analysis of his work in his biography of Congreve. His wit is as unquestionable as his zeal, but his argument is not everywhere equally cogent. On the chapter of profaneness he is fantastic and straitlaced, and so tender of dignities that he will not allow even the god Apis to be disrespectfully mentioned. On that of immorality he is unanswerable, and unless the incriminated dramatists were prepared to say, ‘Evil, be thou my good,’ they could but own
‘Pudet haec opprobria nobisEt dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.’
‘Pudet haec opprobria nobisEt dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.’
‘Pudet haec opprobria nobisEt dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.’
Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted to reply, but to little purpose. Dryden kissed the rod. Collier’s volume is said to have been ‘conceived, disposed, transcribed, and printed in a month.’ He had previously achieved notoriety as a Jacobite pamphleteer, and in his old age became the official head of the decaying sect of the Nonjurors.
Although Richard Bentley (1662-1743) belongs mainly to the eighteenth century, his dissertation upon theEpistles of Phalaris(1699) falls within the seventeenth, and an account of the literary criticism of this age would be incomplete without some mention of the one epoch-making critical work it produced. There is no need to tell again the story of the Bentley-Boyle controversy, so admirably narrated by Macaulay and Jebb; but it may be observed here that it marks an era in criticism as the first example of the testimony of antiquity being irretrievably overthrown by internal evidence. It was not the first time that the genuineness of attested ancient writings had been disputed. Valla had waged war upon the forged donation of Constantine, but his case was so very clear that he had not been answered, but as far as possible ignored. Phalaris had found defenders, and this controversy was perhaps the first in which tradition and authority were fairly vanquished in a pitched battle. Bentley’s extraordinary powers of mind were almost equally evinced in hisBoyle Lectures, also a production of the seventeenth century, which will be noticed in their place.
FOOTNOTES:[8]An instance of the observation of nature as unusual with Dryden as chimneys of the size required are unusual with us.
[8]An instance of the observation of nature as unusual with Dryden as chimneys of the size required are unusual with us.
[8]An instance of the observation of nature as unusual with Dryden as chimneys of the size required are unusual with us.
From the criticism of books we pass, by no violent transition, to the criticism of principles—moral science. The latter half of the seventeenth century is a distinguished period in the history of English philosophy, for in it the most distinctively national of all systems which have obtained currency in this country was fully formulated. It is remarkable that while both empirical and transcendental views in philosophy found supporters, the champions of the latter comprised several illustrious names, and that of the former only one, while nevertheless empiricism obtained as complete a triumph as has ever been recorded in the history of opinion. The principal reason, no doubt, is the natural attractiveness to the solid homely understanding of the Englishman of conclusions based on experience and common sense;[9]but partly also to the fact that the illustrious man by whom the empirical philosophy was mainly upheld carried his speculations into practical life, and became foremost among the defenders of civil and religious liberty. If Locke, like his forerunner Hobbes, had employed his acuteness in defence of absolute power, hewould, like Hobbes, have been caressed by the court, but his doctrines would have been slighted by the nation.
John Locke (1632-1704).
John Locke was born at Wrington in the north of Somerset, August 29 (N.S.), 1632, the same year that gave birth to Spinoza. His father, an attorney, was a man of independent character and strong principle, which he proved by accepting a commission in a Parliamentary regiment. Locke was elected to a foundation scholarship at Westminster in 1647, and to a studentship at Christ Church in 1652. He became M.A. in June, 1658, was appointed Greek Lecturer in 1660, and held other college offices. He wrote about this time two treatises as yet unpublished, one upon the Roman commonwealth, the other on the right of the civil magistrate to regulate indifferent matters touching the exercise of religion, which, under the influence of the hopes which moderate men entertained of the Restoration government, he was at the time inclined to allow. Having determined to study medicine, he obtained in 1666 a dispensation to enable him to hold his studentship, and in the same year the decisive bias was given to his life by his acquaintance with Shaftesbury, of whose family he became virtually a member in the following year. Shaftesbury was as yet neither the Shaftesbury of the Cabal nor the Shaftesbury of the Popish Plot, and there was no reason why Locke should hesitate in attaching himself to a statesman, who, whatever his astuteness and versatility, possessed by far the most enlightened and comprehensive mind of any public man of his day. The main bond which united the two was their agreement on the principle of toleration, for which Chillingworth had been denounced and Roger Williams persecuted, and which scarcely any one would then have subscribed as an abstract proposition, though Cromwell had gone a long way towards reducing it to practice. Influenced probably by Shaftesbury, Locke drew up in 1667 anEssay on Toleration, the first draft of his subsequent celebrated work, and which has itself been retrieved from oblivion by Mr. Fox Bourne. Considering the circumstances of the times, it can excite neither surprise nor censure that he should have argued in favour of denying the privileges of toleration to those who denied them to others,i.e., to Roman Catholics. Two years later he drew up, at Shaftesbury’s instance, a constitution for the colony of Carolina, in which Shaftesbury was largely interested. His medical skill was exerted in relieving Shaftesbury from the effects of a serious complaint; and he acquitted himself successfully in a yet more delicate undertaking, the choosing a wife for his son. He also attended professionally at the birth of Shaftesbury’s grandson, the future author ofCharacteristics. These services were fitly recompensed by secretaryships, both at the Great Seal and at the Board of Trade, but there is not the slightest proof of his having participated in any of his patron’s plots; while it is not too much to say that the steady regard entertained for Shaftesbury by a man like Locke affords the strongest of all presumptions that this enigmatical personage was, after all, a patriot. During three and a half stormy years Locke was in France for the benefit of his health, making observations on the culture of the vine and olive, and noting, under the external splendour of Louis XIV.’s reign, symptoms of that distress among the industrial classes which was to issue in the Revolution. Returning, he found his patron just liberated from the Tower, and their intimate relations continued until Shaftesbury’s flight to Holland in November, 1682, followed by his death in the succeeding January. Locke was thus a mark for the suspicions and animosities of the triumphant Court party. His usual place of residence was now Oxford, where hestill enjoyed his Christ Church studentship, and curious letters are extant from Dean Prideaux, avowing practices akin to espionage, but admitting that John Locke is so close a man, and his servant such a phœnix of discretion, that nothing can be made out. Locke wisely withdrew to Holland about the autumn of 1683, and in November, 1684, was arbitrarily ejected from his studentship by a royal mandate. He employed his exile in forming friendships with Limborch, Le Clerc, and other distinguished men, in composing his famousLetter on Toleration, published anonymously in 1689, and in active communication with William and Mary when the Deliverer’s expedition was finally determined upon. He came to England with Mary in 1689, and received the most flattering offers of important diplomatic posts, which he declined on account of the weakness of his health. He accepted, however, a small appointment, but his principal public services were rendered as a referee on the various important questions submitted to him by Government; and as a man of letters, having nearly reached the age of sixty without publishing anything of importance, he produced within ten years the series of unadorned tracts which have made him, alike in the regions of philosophy and of politics, the most conspicuous representative of masculine, unimaginative, English common sense.
TheLetter on Toleration, as already mentioned, had appeared anonymously in Holland in 1689. In 1690 theEssay on the Human Understandingwas published, and also the twoTreatises on Government; the first, a reply to Filmer, the advocate of divine right, composed, in Professor Fowler’s opinion, between 1680 and 1685; the second written during the last years of Locke’s residence in Holland. TheLetter on Toleration, the authorship of which was not acknowledged during Locke’s lifetime, wasfollowed by three defences against assailants, two of which appeared respectively in 1690 and 1692, the third was posthumous. TheEssay on the Human Understanding, adopted from the first as a text-book at Trinity College, Dublin, but ineffectually proscribed in the writer’s own university, called forth criticisms from Norris of Bemerton, to which Locke replied in two essays allowed to remain unpublished during his life, ‘for,’ he said, ‘I love not controversy.’ He could not, however, avoid a controversy with John Edwards and Bishop Stillingfleet, on hisReasonableness of Christianity(1695). After writing five pamphlets, Locke ultimately remained in possession of the field, the drift of opinion being entirely in his favour, though few of the official ministers of religion ventured to come forward openly in his defence. TheTreatise on Education(1693), written at the request of William Molyneux, excited comparatively little controversy. Another very important class of the productions of his affluent maturity were those on trade and finance, by which he rendered the utmost service to the state. By hisConsiderations on the Value of Money(1691), and other tracts, he contributed largely to the reform of the currency, the condition of which had become intolerable, but was in great danger of being corrected by remedies worse than the disease. Several other publications contributed to disseminate enlightened views on trade, manufactures, and the interest of money. He could not always be right; it is both painful and ludicrous to find so wise and good a man obligedex officioas a Commissioner of Trade to find reasons for discouraging the woollen manufacture in Ireland; which Swift seems to ridicule in describing the Laputan philosophers who had devised means to remove the wool from a sheep’s back, and hoped shortly to propagate the breed of naked sheep over the kingdom. This, nevertheless, is but a slight inconsistency with thegeneral tenor of Locke’s views on economical subjects, which, no less than his political and religious convictions, tended irresistibly towards unrestricted freedom. In 1700 he was released from public life, and spent his few remaining years undisturbed by controversy, in the society of the amiable family of Sir Francis Masham, of High Laver, Essex, of whose house he had long been an inmate. Lady Masham, singularly enough, was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the great English champion of the ideal school of philosophy, and therefore as far removed as possible from Locke in opinion. He died on October 28, 1704.
Locke’s intellectual character must be considered along with his writings; of his moral character it may justly be said, that no English writer of equal eminence stands so high. Butler and Berkeley may have been equally faultless, and the latter, no doubt, possessed more of the spell of personal fascination; but neither was, like Locke, exposed to the storms of a corrupt and factious age; neither was called upon to encounter such perils and make such sacrifices; neither had the same opportunity of exercising fortitude in adversity and moderation in success. Whether as public patriot or private friend, Locke appears ‘a spirit without spot,’ and his resolute temper, his intellectual ardour, and his brilliant achievements, effectually preserve him from the insipidity which so frequently mars the moral physiognomies of good men. His countenance, indeed, is not illumined by the spirituality of a Channing; but the robuster virtues stand forth in even bolder relief, and his apparent exemption from the minor failings which beset even a Newton, is the more remarkable as he wanted neither for enemies nor biographers.
Locke’s great work as a philosopher is theEssay on the Human Understanding, ‘the best chart of the human mind,’ says Hallam, one of the great representativebooks of the world. In Locke, as in his predecessor Hobbes, were united two endowments rarely combined, the sturdy prosaic common sense of the man of the world and the dexterity and subtlety of the practised logician. In his utter antipathy to everything in the slightest degree illumined, or, as he would have thought, distorted, by the glamour of imagination or fancy, Locke was the true representative of his age, and no subsequent change of mental attitude, as the world sweeps on into new and more genial climates of thought, can deprive his work of its representative historical importance. Nor is this all. Locke’s treatise was almost the first investigation of the mind which took note of facts, and was not purely metaphysical. It was also the first in which this study took a leading place. ‘The science which we now call Psychology, or the study of mind,’ says Dr. Fowler, ‘had hitherto, amongst modern writers, been almost exclusively subordinated to other branches of speculation. Locke was the first of modern writers to attempt at once an independent and a complete treatment of the phenomena of the human mind, of their mutual relations, of their causes and limits. This task he undertakes, not in the dogmatic spirit of his predecessors, but in the critical spirit which he may be said almost to have inaugurated. And the effect of his candour on his first readers must have been enhanced by the fact, not always favourable to his precision, that, as far as he can, he throws aside the technical terminology of the schools, and employs the language current in the better kinds of ordinary literature and the well-bred society of his time.’ In fact, as was said of Socrates, he brought philosophy down from heaven to earth; and this service, and the great influence which his work produced upon the future development of philosophy, are perhaps stronger claims to permanent distinctionthan the merits of a theory which can never be overlooked, but can never again command the almost universal assent which it received in its own day. For the application of physiology to psychological research, implicitly, at all events, advocated by Locke, has produced results of which neither he nor his opponents dreamed. The central point of his philosophy is the denial of innate ideas; the mind is to him atabula rasa, a sheet of blank paper, and all the ideas which have been thought inherent in it are the result of experience. In a sense we now know this to be true; but we also know this experience not to be the experience of the individual, but of the race, or rather say of sentient existence for ages inconceivably remote. It follows that although Locke may be abstractedly right in denying the possibility of the acquisition of ideas except through experience, yet practically everyone comes into the world with a host of ideas derived from his ancestors, connate if not innate; and that, so far from the human mind resembling a sheet of blank paper, it is more like a palimpsest inscribed and reinscribedad infinitum. It also follows that the discrepancies of mankind respecting points of morality do not, as Locke thought, disprove the existence of an ideal rule of right, for everyone must necessarily be born with inherited instincts by which such a rule is more or less deflected or obscured. In fact, Locke and his adversaries were both partly right and partly wrong—one party in denying intuition, the other in defining it. Neither had found, or at that period could have found, the real key to the difficulty; but it is to the immortal honour of Locke that all real advance in psychology has been effected by working in his spirit of observation and induction, rather than by theà priorimethod of his opponents. The third and fourth books of the essay,On WordsandOn Knowledge, contain but littlecontroversial matter, and are chiefly devoted to illustrating the imperfection of human faculties, especially language, the necessity for clear and definite conceptions, and the countless impediments in the way of truth.
Three others among Locke’s writings are regarded as classical:On the Reasonableness of Christianity, andOn Education, and hisLetters on Toleration.The Reasonableness of Christianity(1695) is from one point of view an endeavour to render Christianity reasonable by eliminating its corruptions; from another an attempt to establish it on the basis of fulfilled prophecy and miracle. In both respects it was admirably adapted to the prevalent sentiment of Locke’s own day, and, although warmly attacked by Stillingfleet, exerted a great influence upon the theology of the eighteenth century. In our time the point of view has shifted so far as to expose Locke to the full weight of Dr. Martineau’s terse criticism, ‘The affidavit has become the brief.’ Its historical importance, however, can never be impaired, any more than that of the admirableLetters on Toleration, which seem commonplace because they are now esteemed irrefragable. It was otherwise in his own time, and for long afterwards. Their principal literary defects are that they are too polemical, and too long. Of all Locke’s works,Some Thoughts concerning Educationis perhaps the most universally approved, and it is in truth a golden treatise, the very incarnation of good sense and right feeling; and more useful in its own time than it can be now that the errors which Locke especially assailed have become contrary, instead of congenial, to the general spirit of the age. The prevailing tone, the confidence in human nature rightly treated, the abhorrence of the merely arbitrary and despotic, render the work an epoch in the history of culture, and, compared with the coarsemaxims of a Defoe, or even theWhole Duty of Man’s exclusive reliance upon authority, show how greatly Locke was beyond his contemporaries in enlightenment and the genuine spirit of humanity. The insight and penetration into children’s characters are surprising in a man who had no children of his own, or much direct concern with the education of the children of others. They prove that Locke must have been a most careful and accurate observer. If there is a fault in the treatise, it is that the range of view is not always sufficiently wide, and that the author’s precepts are too exclusively propounded with reference to the individual, and too little with a view to the general advantage of society. The disuse of Latin composition, for example, would have done little personal harm to the majority of the individual boys of whom Locke is thinking; but, in his day at all events, would have lowered the standard of culture throughout Europe. In general, however, Locke’s remarks are characterized by the soundest common sense; and there is perhaps no other production of the age so thoroughly in harmony with its pervading spirit.
In sharp contrast to Locke and his school stand the small knot of Cambridge Platonists and their allies—Cudworth, Henry More, Culverwell, Cumberland, Glanvil, and Whichcote, which last may indeed be regarded as a connecting link between the rival thinkers. His place is rather with the divines, and Henry More (1614-1657) belongs more properly to the period of Vaughan in virtue of his poetry, though continuing to write to a late date. Culverwell and Cumberland scarcely rank in a literary history; so that the school is chiefly represented by Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Cudworth’s life was uneventful. One of those moderate men whom the excesses of party provoke to opposition, he sided mainly with the Puritans during the Civil War, but was no Puritan himself, and protested energetically against Puritan disparagement of sweetness and light. He had no difficulty in conforming to the Restoration, and accepting a living from Archbishop Sheldon, but his life was mainly spent in his study, in the production of vast folios, where the ingots of philosophy lay stored while Locke’s current coin passed nimbly from hand to hand. The contrast between the men and the systems is complete at every point; and it is assuredly one of the strangest ironies of fate that Cudworth’s daughter should have become the good angel of Locke’s old age. Cudworth is no doubt by much the more attractive figure to imaginative minds; but it must be conceded as an indisputable truth that his way of thinking could not possibly have produced nearly so much good, have so profoundly leavened men’s ideas on legislation and education, or have so contributed to build up the national character for sound common sense. This admitted, Cudworth may be heartily praised as a sublime and refined thinker, epithets inappropriate to Locke. His great work isThe Intellectual System, published in 1678, only the first part of which ever appeared. ATreatise on Immutable Moralityremained in manuscript until 1731. Cudworth’s purpose may briefly be defined as the expulsion of all materialistic and mechanical notions from theology, metaphysics, and ethics. He wages war upon atheism, fatalism, utilitarianism, whatsoever is opposed to elevating and poetical conceptions of the order of things. His erudition is only too extensive, and he is very candid. Dryden thought that he had stated the atheistic objections more powerfully than he had answered them; and his doctrine of plastic force in nature verges upon Pantheism, as indeed religious philosophies usually do. He is finely analyzedin theTypes of Ethical Theoryof Dr. Martineau, who says of his philosophy:
‘Embodied as it is in unfinished books, and buried in massive erudition, it has been distantly respected rather than closely studied; and has left upon few readers an adequate impression of the depth of the author’s penetration, the comprehensiveness of his grasp, the subtlety of his analysis, and the happy flashes of expression by which he flings light upon real though unsuspected relations.’
‘Embodied as it is in unfinished books, and buried in massive erudition, it has been distantly respected rather than closely studied; and has left upon few readers an adequate impression of the depth of the author’s penetration, the comprehensiveness of his grasp, the subtlety of his analysis, and the happy flashes of expression by which he flings light upon real though unsuspected relations.’