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But there are several of his polemical writings which had little value, even in leading or enlightening the opinions of his contemporaries; and of those which had that effect, two only need to be named. The royalists having, after King Charles's death, published the "Eikon Basilike," or "Royal Image," a clever collection of spurious meditations said to have been written by the unfortunate prince in his imprisonment, Milton dissected the book in his "Eikonoklastes," or Image-breaker," with great force both of reasoning and eloquence, but with a painful want of forbearance towards the unhappy deceased. It is with different feelings that we turn to his " Areopagitica, a Speech to the Parliament of England, for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." This defence of the freedom of the press, triumphant in argument, is one of the noblest and most impressive pieces of eloquence in the English tongue. It may likewise be noted, that the more sedate "Tractate on Education," composed about the same time, aimed likewise, among other objects, at the end designed in the oration; the convincing of the dominant party in the state, that the suppression of opinions by force was as wrong in them as it had been in those whom they displaced. These two treatises give, in dissimilar shapes, sufficient specimens of Milton's extraordinary power in prose writing. His style is more Latinized than that of his most eloquent contemporaries: the exotic infection pervades both his terms and his arrangement; and his quaintness is not that of the old idiomatic English. Yet he has passages marvellously sweet, and others in which the grand sweep of his sentences emulates the cathedral-music of Hooker.*

* JOHN MILTON.

From "Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing ;”

published in 1644.

I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: for books are not absolutely dead things, but de contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master-spirit,

MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.

5. The miscellaneous writings of our eighty years must not be allowed to detain us very long. Such was their variety of forin and matter, and so great the ability expended on them, that many pages might be filled by a mere description of their kinds, and the bare names of those who wrote, in each, something that is interesting to the student of literary history. We must content ourselves with learning a few facts, under each of a very few heads.

First may be commemorated briefly Hakluyt and Purchas, our earliest collectors of accounts of voyages; with several travellers who told their own tale, such as Davis, the celebrated navigator, Sandys, whose name we shall meet in the poetical file, and the garrulous and amusing Howell.

b. 1554.

After these may stand the Literary Critics, chiefly for the sake of the earliest among them, the accomplished Sir Philip d. 1586. Sidney. His "Defence of Poesy," written in 1581, is an eloquent and high-minded tribute to the value, moral and intellectual, of the most powerful of all the literary arts.

In regard

embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

We boast our light: but, if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern those planets that are oft combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place in the firmament where they may be seen evening or morning? The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge.

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Behold now the vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam: purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

to the distinctive function and character of poetry, it rather evinces fine intuition, than lays down clear doctrines; but perhaps it did all that could have been hoped for at the time when it appeared.*

Puttenham's "Art of English Poesie," published five years later, has dawnings of critical principles, and, though far from being eloquent, is a creditable attempt at regularity in prose composition. Of his contemporary Webbe it needs only to be said, that he is a vehement advocate of the experiment which then endangered our poetry, of adapting to our tongue the classical metres. A part in one of the prose treatises of Ben Jonson the dramatist, entitles him to be ranked, with honour, among the earliest critical writers whose opinions were supported by philosophical thinking.

Our next division will contain Romances and Novels. Here, again, our list opens with Sir Philip Sidney. His "Arcadia" is a ponderous concatenation of romantic and pastoral incidents related in prose, many pieces of verse being interspersed, in imitation of the writer's Italian models. Enjoying a popularity which, long continuing to increase, paved the way for the wearisome French romances, it has in modern times received all varieties of

*SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

From the "Defence of Poesy :" written in 1581.

There is no art delivered to mankind, that hath not the works of nature for its principal object; without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. * * Only the Poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not inclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as diverse poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, or whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen: the poets only deliver a golden. Neither let it be deemed too saucy a comparison, to balance the highest point of man's wit with the efficacy of nature. But rather give right honour to the Heavenly Maker of that maker; who, having made man to his own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of that second nature; which in nothing he showed so much as in poetry, when with the force of a divine breath he bringeth things forth surpassing her doings; with no small arguments to the incredulous of that first accursed fall of Adam; since our erect wit maketh us know what perfec tion is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it.

estimate, from enthusiastic admiration to surly contempt. Unreadable as a whole by any but very warm lovers of genius, it is the unripe production of a young poet, and abounds in isolated passages alike beautiful in sentiment and in language.

A little later, the press began to pour forth shoals of short novels and romances, sometimes collected into sets, and embracing both original compositions and translations. They were chiefly the hasty effusions of the readiest or most needy of that large crowd of professional authors, who abounded in London from about the beginning of our period, and among whom were nearly all the dramatists. The most indefatigable, and one of the most ingenious, of these novel-writers, was the unfortunate play-writer, Robert Greene; one or two of whose pieces derive a painful interest from telling, doubtless with Byronic disguises, romantic but discreditable incidents in the author's dissipated career. From his novels, and others of the class, Shakspeare borrowed not a few of his plots. But the most whimsical of all of them were the two parts of a strange kind of novel, written by the dramatist Lyly: "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit;" and "Euphues his England." The affectations, both of thought and language, which were the staple of these exceedingly fashionable pieces, doubtless corrupted the diction of good society, and certainly were not without their effect on literature. Sir Percie Shafton's speeches, in "The Monastery," are a poor imitation of them they may be better understood from the parodies of them in "Love's Labour Lost." This class of writings has no interest, calling for a further prosecution of their history. But they continued to be produced freely, till the civil war brought them to a

stand.

The Pamphlets of the time might deserve a chapter for themselves. Written for the day, and to earn the day's bread, they treated every theme that arose, from public occurrences to private eccentricities, from historical facts to apocryphal marvels. From the beginning to the end, very many of them were polemical; and this employment of them may be instanced from three controversies. The earliest of these regarded the moral lawfulness of the stage. It was keenly conducted, on both sides, from the time when Shakspeare's works began to appear, several of the smaller dramatists taking an active part in it: and it had not quite died away when, in the time of Charles the First, it was prosecuted in a more ambitious form by Prynne, who was punished so cruelly for the animadversions on the court, thrown out in his "Histriomastix" or Player's Scourge." The second war of pamphlets raged in Queen Elizabeth's time. Its charac

ter is signified by the name of the imaginary person who was the mouth-piece of one of the parties. He was called "Martin Marprelate." The third series of hostilities might perhaps deserve a more dignified place, on account of the celebrity of some persons concerned in it. It was opened in the beginning of the Troubles; by the appearance of a pamphlet attacking episcopacy, and bearing the signature of Smectymnuus; a name indicating by initials the names of the five Presbyterian writers, among whom Edmund Calamy was the most famous. In the battle which followed, Bishop Hall fought on the one side, and John Milton on the other.

6. A very large number of the Miscellaneous writings might be classed together as Essays: and the frequency and popularity of such attempts show how busy and restless men's minds were, and how widely thought expatiated over all objects of interest. A great many of these effusions assumed something like a dramatic shape, taking the form of descriptive sketches of character; a fact, again, symptomatic of another feature of the times, that love of action, and lively sympathy with practical energy, out of which the Old English Drama extracted the strength that in spired it.

The two kinds of Essays, the Descriptive and the Didactic, may be considered separately.

Of

Small books of the former class, beginning to be written early in Elizabeth's reign, were abundant throughout the seventeenth century. They may have been suggested by Greek models; but their cast was always original, and their tone very various. the lightest and least elevated kind was one of the earliest that can here be named, "The Gull's Hornbook" of the dramatist Dekker, which is a picture of low society in London. Of others, entertaining more serious aims, examples are furnished by sketches of Hall and Fuller, already mentioned. One of the most famous and lively books of the sort was the "Characters" of the unfortunate Sir Thomas Overbury, the dependent and victim of James's minion, Somerset: and among later attempts were the "Resolves" of Feltham, and the "Microcosmography" attributed to Bishop Earle.

The Didactic series begins with a valuable work of a great man; Bacon's fifty-eight Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral." In this volume the active-minded writer sets down his thoughts on man and nature, on life and death, on religion and polity, on learning and art. It was a favourite work of his own, and has made his manner of thinking known to many who are ignorant of his systematized philosophy. In the elaborated shape in which