BOOK IV

CLASSICISM (1660-1780)

CHAPTER X

THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700)

pulses

THERE came a day when the intellectual enthusiasm of the Renaissance and the spiritual fervor of the Reformation had spent their force. Men grew tired Decline of of the "unchartered freedom" of poetic feeling Older Imand imagination, grew tired also of that religious intensity which made the Puritan desire to worship God in his own way and made him desire also that all other men should worship God in the same way. There came, naturally enough, a reaction which was destined to change for a time the whole face of literature. So far, the religious spirit had been a great literary impulse from the very beginning of English literature. The spirit of romance had been powerful ever since the Norman Conquest, though greatly modified by the Renaissance. Now, men desired

to be neither religious nor romantic. If this had been all, the attitude would have been merely a negative one, and therefore incapable of producing any great literary results. The movement, however, had a positive side as well, and thus became genuinely fruitful.

The new impulse which now became operative was what we ordinarily call Classicism. Men were no longer genuinely inspired by the ancient writers, as in the Rise of days of the Renaissance. They sought to follow Classicism them in formal fashion, and they succeeded in following them only afar off. It has been truly said that the clas

sical movement was more Latin than Greek, and more French than Latin. On the face of it, it is more distinctly foreign than any other movement that has greatly affected English literature. Looking deeper, we shall see that what power it had was due to the fact that it found something already in the English nature which was in harmony with its spirit. The early Elizabethan dramatists had endeavored to conform English drama to Senecan models, but had found themselves swept away by the great tide of romanticism. Ben Jonson had stood for classic "art" as opposed to Shakespeare's wild "nature,” but had found most of his contemporaries on Shakespeare's side. The followers of Jonson had carried on the classic tradition, but had not made much headway. Milton had cultivated a classic refinement of style, but had found this phase of his genius overshadowed by greater elements. Now, at last, in the exhaustion of powers greater in themselves and more consonant with the English character, the day of the classicist had come, and whatever of classic instinct was latent in the English nature was to have its opportunity. The prevailing French influence strengthened and encouraged this tendency, but did not create it. What seems at first sight like a movement entirely from without, is seen to be for the most part an attempt on the part of the English race to develop powers hitherto repressed and to try its strength in ways hitherto barred. That this is really the weaker side of the racial character accounts for the comparative inferiority of the literature of the classical period; that the strongest instincts of the race led it in other directions, accounts for the powerful and complete reaction which finally came.

Meaning of

What is Classicism? That is a difficult question to answer briefly; for the term is used in many Classicism ways and really means many things. As applied to the literature under consideration, Classicism is

essentially literary conformity. Classicists belong to the established church of literature and are intolerant of literary heresy. Its reverence for authority, its finish of form, its repression of passion and imagination, its exaltation of reason, its regularity and restraint, its essentially prosaic temper - these are some of the characteristics of Classicism. During the three generations of its dominance, Classicism set up three great literary autocrats - John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson. The literary autocrat is of the essence of the classical spirit. There are no such autocrats elsewhere in the literature. Ben Jonson approaches nearest to the type; and as we have just noted, Ben Jonson was a prophet of Classicism. On the religious side, it might appear as though the tendency of the age was a revolt against too much restraint rather than a reaction against too much free- Religion and dom. In a sense it was so; but the opposition Politics to Puritanism was a revolt against its severity, its harshness, its intolerance, its rigid standards of personal conduct, rather than against its religious authority. Religious authority had the unquestioned, if sometimes too nominal, assent of the age. Puritanism, indeed, in spite of its own tyrannies, really represented freedom of conscience more than did any other phase of religious thought in the seventeenth century. Men turned from Puritanism to accept the easy-going and conventional authority of the Estab. lished Church. They accepted that as they accepted the same sort of authority in literature. Puritanism was nonconformity; and the age was returning to the established order of things both in literature and in religion. the same is true in politics. After Cromwell and the Commonwealth, after an interval of republicanism tempered by tyranny, the age returned to the comfortable doctrine of the divine right of kings. When this in its turn became too oppressive, they dethroned James II, but only to set

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