RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

SATIRE AND ESSAY

The Restoration of Charles II. to the English throne in 1660 marks the beginning of a new era. As a reaction against the social restraint and religious bigotry of the Puritan régime, the court, permeated as it was by French influences, became corrupt in morals and cynical and materialistic in temper. Following the lead of the court, polite society in general adopted sophisticated standards. Fearful of emotionalism, the upper classes sought for a test of human values that should be purely intellectual, and they found it in Rationalism, "common sense,' Reason. The norm of humanity became the polished city man as opposed to the simple rustic, and the carefully trimmed garden ('Nature methodized') was admired at the expense of the wild, uncultivated landscape. The period was one of questioning and investigation in science and of satire and criticism in literature. It has been called the Age of Reason.

Late in the seventeenth century the rule of Reason associated itself with a body of critical principles known as Classicism. Applied to eighteenth-century literature, the term Classicism designates the imitation of the working principles of ancient Greek and Latin masterpieces as these principles were elaborated and reinterpreted by English and Continental, especially French, critics. In the eyes of the typical Classicist the supposed rules of the Ancients assumed an exaggerated authority. Toward the close of the seventeenth century the admiration of Classical models at the expense of more recent literature, including Shakespeare, resulted in a spirited controversy known as the "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns." Reason and Classicism, though overemphasizing the mechanical and intellectual elements in literary composition, performed a real service by urging the importance of clarity, order, and technical excellence.

With the subordination of emotion to intellect and of originality to imitation, the lyric poetry of the Restoration became less spontaneous. The ode, imitated from Pindar or Horace and adapted to English conditions, became a popular form. Social criticism and satire predominated in the non-dramatic poetry of the period, and prose began to rank with verse as an accepted vehicle of expression. The usual verse-form, at least for longer poems, was the couplet consisting of two ten-syllable rhyming lines and called Heroic because of its original employment in Heroic literature.

The new prose, originating in the pamphlet warfare and foreign news bulletins of the Puritan period, developed rapidly in the spirited journalism of the late seventeenth century. In the hands of men of literary talent associated with affairs of state (e.g., Temple) it became a far more practical, if less ornamental, form than it had been previously. The specific literary types developed were the familiar essay, which reached its perfection in the work of Steele and Addison, and, early in the eighteenth century, the novel with its strong appeal to the new selfconsciousness of the middle classes. From the beginning of the eighteenth century till the present day the history of English prose has been continuous.

The artificial suppression of the drama during the Puritan period was followed at the Restoration by a revival of dramatic interest. Of the various types of drama, in both verse and prose, that flourished during the late seventeenth century, the most characteristic was realistic comedy full of clever dialogue between personages drawn from the upper circles of society. Less democratic than the drama of the Elizabethan age, that of the Restoration was dominated by the Court and reflected its moral laxity and cold intellectuality. About the close of the seventeenth century an effort at reform was attempted in the sentimental drama, which emphasized virtuous conduct and the innate goodness of man.

The Age of Reason bore within itself the seeds of a new order of things. Even during the seventeenth century there were intimations that the so-called Rational view of the world was

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not entirely satisfactory. Science and philosophy revealed hitherto unsuspected beauties in the universe and in mankind, and the wilder aspects of Nature gained in favor as subjects of enthusiasm. With the rise of democratic ideas in government and society, greater emphasis was laid upon the virtues of the unsophisticated, and the simple peasant began to assume a new importance in the eyes of social theorists and poets. In religion and morals the true test of thought and conduct was found more and more in emotion rather than in intellect, in the heart rather than in the head. The conviction grew that luxury and sophistication were evils, and that poetry, along with the other arts, was doomed unless Rules were subordinated to spontaneous and original Genius. In short, the true solution of the human problem was found in a new Return to Nature.

As we progress through the eighteenth century, we find these ideas more and more clearly reflected in literature. Poets seek inspiration in simple country scenes (e.g., Thomson, Goldsmith), in night and solitude (e.g., Lady Winchilsea, Collins, Gray, Young, Blair), in the literature of the folk (see the ballad imitations), in Shakespeare, Spenser, and medieval romance (e.g., Thomson, Warton, Gray), and in writers such as Homer, the Celtic bards, and the Scandinavian skalds (e.g., Gray), who were supposed to have lived in more primitive times and to have composed poetry by the aid of Original Genius rather than by Rules. Secular lyrics as well as hymns show a more profound sense of spiritual values and of the bond that unites man to his fellow-man and to the hereafter. In short, before Classicism had run its course, new forces, known as Romantic, were already at work in life and in literature.

RESTORATION

POETRY

SATIRE

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