No More Learning

9


## p. 381 (#397) ############################################

Street Ballads and Pamphlets
381
By the
>
Thus, the metres and diction of popular catch-pennies had
risen to the level of educated and experienced men.
third decade of the seventeenth century, these fugitive fly-
sheets had also been called upon to serve the purpose of the
political rancour and indignation which retarded intellectual
progress and plunged England into civil war.
Once again,
the pamphleteers and ballad-mongers of the time had recourse
to old forms of literature to convey their sarcasm and in-
nuendo. For instance, one lampoon on Buckingham's expedition
to France, with the refrain 'The cleane contrary way,' is copied
from the Cujus contrarium verum est of medieval satire, and
two more, in imitation of Lucian or Dekker', are dialogues be-
tween Charon and the murdered duke. Another pamphlet,
travestying the title of a newspaper as Mercurius Diabolicus or
Hell's Intelligencer, shows us the devil, in answer to a citizen's
question, recounting the pressure of work in hell since parlia-
ment came into power; and, in 1660, when that body dissolved
itself and a general desire for the restoration of the king was
felt, a ballad News from Hell or the Relation of a Vision,
represents the devil's amazement and incredulity that England,
lately ‘His sweet darling dear,' was now proving false to her
allegiance to hell. Others, such as Heraclitus' Dream (1642),
representing the shepherd (i. e. the church) shorn by his sheep,
are copied from medieval dream-visions.
The monologue was further developed and reached a high level
of satire in such pieces as Truth Flatters Not (1647), in which,
after pope, priest and prelate have betrayed their worldly am-
bition and duplicity, each in a soliloquy, Truth censures them all
in a closing speech. Or, in Three Speeches (1642), satirising the
narrowness and self-satisfied philistinism of the commercial class,
as exemplified by 'Master Warden's' political oration to his
fellows; his wife's comments on the discourse to her friends
and the chambermaid's views on affairs in general and especially
on papistry. The old dramatic broadside is still found in A coffin
for King Charles ; a Crowne for Cromwell; a Pit for the People
(1649).
Other forms of popular literature were at once adapted to the
factious feelings of the people. In Mercurius Melancholicus, or
1
Ante, vol. II, chap. XVI, p. 386.
· The idea of a visit to hell is almost continuous in literature since Homeric times,
and had been used by Jacobean writers, especially by Dekker, T. , in Newes from Hell,
1606; see ante, vol. iv, chap. XVI, p. 353, and bibliography under Dekker, T. , pp. 526, 527.
IV


## p. 382 (#398) ############################################

382
The Advent of Modern Thought
.
Newes from Westminster (1647), the old idea of a dozen arrant
fooles and knaves' is still preserved. Mock testaments were used
by both parties as at the time of the reformation', much like the
more modern 'burning in effigy,' to vilify not only persons but
causes. In the new spirit of the times, they became more like
allegories than mere lampoons. For instance, A True Inventory
of the goods and chattels of Superstition (1642) tells how Super-
stition, of the parish of Blind Devotion in the county of Corrupt
Doctrine and in the kingdom of Idolatry, bequeaths his goods and
chattels. Puritans, especially familists, constantly resorted to
their Bible to heap obloquy on the worldliness and licence of the
cavaliers. In the Dammee? Cavaliers Warning piece (1643), they
construed Obadiah's tirade against the Idumeans into a censure
of the royalist party; The Debauched Cavalier, or the English
Midianite (1642) is an attempt to discover, in the lives of king
Charles and his supporters, the enormities with which Israel's
enemy was credited: The Downefall of Dagon (1643) is the
demolition of the cross in Cheapside. The dialogue had, for cen-
turies, been a familiar form of discussion and satire, so now, many
puritan pamphlets are modelled on the catechism. Some are
serious booklets, such as The Souldiers Catechism (1644), in which
a Christian's right to take up arms in defence of religious and
civil freedom and his duty as a true warrior are taught by question
and answer. But there still lingered among the people the medieval
tendency to travesty sacred formulas, and this love of parody led
pamphleteers to vent their irony in mock catechisms as well as in
mock testaments. The most abject self-incriminations are put into
their opponents' mouths? A subtler and more mordant irony per-
vades The City Dames Petition in the behalfe of the long afflicted,
but well affected cavaliers (1647). Certain wives of London trades-
men sign a letter begging the king and parliament to stop the war.
The document explains that the good women-true descendants of
the Wife of Bath, Maid Emlyn and Jill of Brainford—who mind
their husbands’ shops, sorely miss not only the custom, but, also, the
courtship of those gallant exquisites whose breath was 'as sweet
as amber' and whose essences made the dames' establishments as
-
1 Cf. The Wyll of the Devyll, ante, vol. , chap. v, p. 86.
. As the puritan strictly excluded oaths from his conversation, the cavalier
cultivated them. His “Damn’ was almost proverbial and is the theme of the
vindictive ballad A total Rout, or a brief discovery of a Pack of Knaves and Drabs
(1653).
3 Cavaliers' Catechisme, or the Reformed Protestant catechising the anti-christian
Papist, 1643.
4


## p. 383 (#399) ############################################

Cavalier and Roundhead Satirists
383
'fragrant as the spring's first flowers. ' The royalist party met their
opponents with the same weapons. They refuted puritan calumny
and asserted their faith in the divine right of kings by such
manifestoes as The Cavaliers Catechisme and confession of his
faith (1646), while they vented their scorn and hatred of the
parliament by representing it at prayer for release from its own
imputed sins in The Parliaments Letanie (1647). Even amid the
bitterness of defeat, the cavalier gaiety lives in these litanies ; in
one of them', supplications to avoid such afflictions as usurers,
parliamentary government and Oliver Cromwell are offered up in
rollicking verses suggestive of a drinking song.
Controversialists tended to ridicule their antagonists under
some typical name or character. Thus, we find the presbyterian
party frequently attacked under the name of Jack Presbyter or
Sir John Presbyter, just as, when the republican party rallied at
the time of the Rump, their opponents alluded to them by their
own battle-cry “The Cause? ' But, more often, the Londoner's
interest in notorieties, which had already, in less troublous times,
made household words of such characters as Hobson and Tarlton,
now created a demand for allusions to individuals. Thus, satirists
were led to cultivate the art of personal caricature and ridicule
which was soon to become the chief excellence of political songs.
There are sarcasms on prince Rupert's dog, Oliver Cromwell's nose*
and Ireton's effeminate chin. But many pamphleteers still utilised
the decasyllabic couplet which Hall and Marston had established
as the recognised vehicle of personal invective. These satirists
improved on the confused and obscure diction of their models,
but they cramped themselves in a style too staid and monotonous
for the whimsical vein of the true lampoonist. They were more
successful in the formal epigrams and elegies which appeared in
multitudes, especially to lament the death of Essex in 1646, of
Charles in 1649 and of Gloucester5 in 1660.
As the civil war was, in some respects, a struggle between
systems and institutions, many pamphleteers cared less about
· The Cavaliers Letanie lately composed by a well willer to his Majesty's person and
all his most Loyull Subjects, 1648.
? E. g. Prynne's The Republican and others spurious good Old Cause briefly and
truely anatomised, 1659.
* See ante, vol. iv, chap. Xvi, p. 360.
* E. g. A Case for Nol Cromwells Nose and the Cure of Tim Fairfax's Gout, 1648,
and The Blazing-Star, or, Nolls Nose Newly Revived and taken out of his Tomb. By
Collonel Baker, 1660.
6 See Catalogue of the Thomason Tracts, 1908, B. M.


## p. 384 (#400) ############################################

384 The Advent of Modern Thought
individuals than classes, and resorted to character sketches as the
handiest weapon for type satire. The Theophrastians' had taught
succeeding generations how to create a lifelike word-picture out
of all that was ridiculous or objectionable in any social type.
When mutual opposition made the puritan more rigidly correct
and the cavalier more aggressively self-assertive, there were
endless opportunities for crisp, concentrated portraiture. And yet,
only a few sketches, such as the versified A Puritane set forth in
his lively colours . . . with the Character of an Holy Sister
(1642) or the trenchant study The Drunkard's Character (1646)
or T. Ford's collection of clear-cut portraits entitled Times
anatomised (1647) or John Wilson's picture of purity and single-
heartedness, A New Anatomie or character of a Christian,
or a Roundhead (1645), preserved the statuesque outline of the
genre. In the heat of political conflict, men cannot detach their
minds from episodes and side issues; they need to argue over
isolated questions, and, thus, the bulk of political character
sketches digress into particulars till many of them become little
else than manifestoes or 'queries. ' John Cleiveland, who begins
his portraits with Overburian flashes of wit and fantasy, soon
forgets himself and his subject in bitter criticisms of his opponents,
in one character sketchº exclaiming: ‘But I have not Inke enough
to cure all the Tetters and Ring-worms of the State. ' So com-
pletely is the style absorbed in the heat and the haste of civil
feud, that some so-called 'characters' merely retain the title,
presumably because of its popularity.
These many types of literature were employed by pamphleteers
because the spirit of conflict was still that of the sixteenth century.
In the Middle Ages and at the renascence, controversy appealed
to men’s passions rather than to their intellect. The issues were
generally so simple that combatants had not any need to argue
deeply; but the cause lay so near their hearts that they could not
keep from obloquy. Hence, they invented a whole literature of
vituperation, so that the same insults could be repeated again and
again in new ways. The seventeenth century inherited this
armoury of invective and also their ancestors' single-hearted
eagerness to use it. Yet a large proportion of broadsides have no
peculiarity of form or style and, so far as genre is concerned,
remain street ballads. After this reversion to simplicity comes the
beginning of a great change. Even before the king's standard
? Ante, vol. iv, chap. XVI, pp. 335, 342
* The Character of a London Diurnall, 1644.
7


## p. 385 (#401) ############################################

Civil War Pamphleteers 385
was raised, there were a number of level-headed democrats like
the author of The present estate of Christendome (1642) who takes
a statesmanlike view of the unrest pervading Europe and suggests
practical remedies for each country including his own. But, when -
hostilities had once broken out, the sentiments of the common
people also became more complex. A national controversy was
an interchange of assertions; but, for the average man, the civil
war was a game of chess", in which not only his opinions but
his sympathies, ideals and, perhaps, life and property, were the
pawns. Hence, while some pamphleteers were irrevocably com-
mitted to the support of one faction, others found their partisanship
distracted by all manner of calculations, conjectures and conflicting
emotions, and their broadsides became reviews of the situation?
Parodies, epigrams, testaments and portraits were not of any
service to such commentators. While Corantos, Mercuries
and Diurnalls were developing into newspapers, they wrote
their leading articles—for such is the character of these
ballads in the form of street verse, because the people, from
force of habit, still looked to this type for an expression
of their own opinions. But their work, nevertheless, is new in
spirit.
The comments and arguments of these broadsides are not
original or profound; but they show that a large proportion of the
people had become reflective. Not only ballads, but pamphlets
and tracts now adopt a more thoughtful tone and we enter on the
third stage in the development of flysheet literature. When
bloodshed had begun, the ordinary citizen also realised that civil
war was far worse than the victory of either party, and tracts
began to appear such as England's Miserie, if not prevented
by the speedie remedie of a happy union between His Majestie
and His Parliament (1642). Or, again, the leaders in the
struggle were bitterly and unjustly satirised for preventing peace
in Mr Hampden's Speech occasioned upon the Londoner's
Petition for Peace (1642) or in The Sense of the House (1643),
which put into the mouths of orators selfish and inept reasons for
continuing the war. R. W. , who had already upheld the parlia-
mentarian cause in several pamphlets, now brought the wisdom
1 The Game of Chesse, a metaphoricall Discourse showing the present estate of This
Kingdome (1643).
? See many of the pieces in Rump: or an exact collection of the choycest Poems and
Songs relating to the Late Times. By the most Eminent Wits, from anno 1639 to anno
1661. 1662. Facsimile rpt n. d.
E, L. VII. OH. XVI,
25


## p. 386 (#402) ############################################

386 The Aavent of Modern Thought
and experience of antiquity to bear on the question of actual
fighting. In The Character of Warre (1643), he discusses its
justification but observes that none delight in the sound of the
warlike Drums or in the Alarmes of Warr; but onely they who
never tasted the bitternesse thereof. ' The author of a weird
fantasy entitled A Winter Dreame (1649), describes in rhythmic
and harmonious prose how he seemed to visit the different
countries of Europe distracted by war, ending with England, the
most stricken of all. Protests are also heard on behalf of the
simpler joys of peace, but none set forth this new spirit of common
humanity more effectively than The Virgins Complaint for the
Losse of their sweethearts occasioned by these present wars (1643).
From the strenuous days of Elizabeth, the great personalities of
history had appealed to men's imagination; and now, in the excite-
ment of war, people found themselves even more in sympathy with
bygone days. The Penitent Traytor (1647), representing the con-
fession of a Devonshire gentleman condemned for treason against
Henry III, is only one of many ballads which brought the past into
touch with the emotions of the present. But the middle classes
were now beginning to think, and to turn to history for guidance
in perplexity? Thus, even at the outset of the struggle, they
welcomed such pamphlets as Some wiser than Some; or A Display
of the Times past and present, with some probable conjecture of
the times to come (1643). A growing spirit of protest against excess
runs all through this period of anarchy. In 1641, the jangle of
conflicting creeds was exposed in A Discovery of 29 Sects here in
London, and, again, in 1646, by Thomas Edwards's Gangraena.
But, among other such censures, none illustrates better the new
temper of the times than H. B. 's The Craftsmans Craft, or the
Wiles of the Discoverer (1649), which revolts not against the
number of sects but against the spirit of calumny in which they
carried on their controversies. As the fortune of war varied from
week to week, the evil effect of mendacious and inflammatory
news-sheets became only too evident. The maker of broadsides
had been an object of censure since Elizabethan times, and, just
before the outbreak of the war, an act suppressing unlicensed
printers was made the occasion for a malicious dialogue on this
needy brood? . In 1642, a Theophrastian character sketch describes
1 Cf. Morall Discourses and Essayes by T. C. , 1655. See, also, Expedients for
Publique Peace, 1660.
2 The Downefall of temporizing poets, unlicensed printers, upstart booksellers, trotting
Mercuries and bawling Hawkers, 1641.


## p. 387 (#403) ############################################

Social Pamphleteers 387
a
the ballad-monger's fiery nose and wretched drunken rimes, full
of libels and lying rumours? There is a mellower spirit in The
Great Assizes holden in Parnassus, at which the scholars of the
renascence acting as judges, the great English poets (including
Drayton, Shakespeare and Massinger) as jury, with Ben Jonson as
keeper of the 'Trophonian Denne' and John Taylor as crier of the
court, arraign these new-fledged periodicals for perverting the
truth, defiling literature, seducing readers from more serious
books and disseminating poisonous doctrines. The proceedings
are narrated in smooth decasyllabic verse, with many sly touches
of humour.
With all its errors and excesses, the great rebellion was, for
many men, a crusade against the vices of feudalism. Reforming
zeal was in the air, and, during the civil war and the protectorate,
earnest men were busy investigating social and administrative
abuses which had not been direct issues of the struggle. Contro-
versies which seem to arise in puritan bigotry, disclose a thought-
fulness and sanity quite foreign to Elizabethan exposures. The
hatred of elaborate dress, which began with the fanaticism of the
Adamites, gradually changed into a respect for the dignity of the
human form. Broadsides ridiculed fashions because they were
incongruous, and John Bulwer, in his Anthropometamorphosis
(1653), collected all the stories, ancient and modern, of savages'
adornments and mutilations, to show how men disgrace what was
made in God's image. A hatred of gluttony runs through the
paper war waged against Christmas celebrations. Puritan distrust
of women had started again the time-honoured controversy as to
feminine character; but now the dispute broadened into moral
councils on love or marriage and is free from pruriency. The
most revolting coarseness is still found, but only in diatribes
against prostitution. The greater number of pamphlets merely
ridicule the inconstancy, vanity or caprice of women. Many are
cast into the form of dialogues and epistles. And, although
humorists, in this age of constitutional anomalies, found piquancy
in picturing female parliaments and commonwealths in which
women assert their independence, the satire has lost the venom
of the preceding age.
Other pamphleteers turned their attention to abuses in the
administration of justice. The system of imprisonment for debt
had already been attacked as early as 1618 by Mynshul's curious
1 A True description of the Pot-Companion Poet, Who is the Founder of all the Base
and libelous Pamphlets lately spread abroad.
25--2


## p. 388 (#404) ############################################

388 The Advent of Modern Thought
5
Characters of a Prison"; and, in 1622, the remarkable A Petition
to the King's most Excellent Majestie had urged the injustice of
imprisoning a man because of his financial losses and the folly of
depriving the state of serviceable citizens, besides eloquently
describing the mental anguish and moral degradation of gaol life.
These evils became tenfold more apparent during the disasters
and disorganisation of the civil war. One writer2 tells how the
minor officials of the court gain access to the ear of the judge and
use their influence to further their own ends; another describes
the mercenary character of lawyers and their devices for delaying
judgment, thereby filling their own pockets; another protests
against the tyranny and exaction of gaolers. The turns of fortune,
in these insecure times, had brought many law-abiding and edu-
cated men to prison, who beguiled their weariness and sorrow by
writing. Thus, quite a literature of gaol-birds sprang up, one of
the best productions being Sir Francis Wortley's spirited ballad
on the incarcerated royalists in 1647. When the protectorate was
established, men hoped that peace would leave the government
leisure to rectify these and other abuses. Pamphlets and flysheets
on legal and prison reform now became even more numerous; and,
though these writers have neither the style nor the vigour of earlier
times, they nearly all show a sense of human rights and a practical
insight into the far-reaching effects of social evils, very different
from the narrow violence of Jacobean and Caroline pamphleteers.
Everywhere, the people seemed to feel the need of reconciliation
and fellowship. In 1647, The Cavaliers' Diurnall written by
Adventure replaced real news or invective by playful sarcasm
and literary trifling, suggestive of the Addisonian circle. Even in
A Relation of the Ten grand, infamous Traytors, who for their
murder and detestable villany against our late soveraigne Lord
King Charles the First (1660), the horror of regicide is almost
lost sight of in the cultivation of style.
Tolerance, reasonableness and sympathy were by no means
strangers to English literature; they had graced the works of
scholars and courtiers; they had shed their charm over the drama.
But it was not till the end of the civil war that the middle classes,
>
i Ante, vol. iv, chap. xvi, p. 350.
2 The Courts of Justice Corrected and Amended, or The Corrupt Lawyer Untrust,
Lash'd and quasht, 1642.
3 A Looking glasse for all proud, ambitious, covetous and corrupt Lawyers, 1646.
4 Liberty vindicated against slavery, 1646.
A Loyall Song, of the Royall Feast kept by the Prisoners in the Towre . . . (On the
occasion of a present of two brace of bucks from the king).
5


## p. 389 (#405) ############################################

The Coffee-houses
389
6
as a whole, began to outgrow medieval habits of thought and
expression and to cultivate modern 'civilitie. ' As we have seen,
this advance was partly due to reaction of sentiment, but, even
more, to a certain change in the people's mode of life. The
citizens of old London were gregarious, and, as the civil war had
been a conflict of opinions no less than of arms, they had developed
the necessity for discussion. Being careful both of their health
and of their purse, they did not like to meet in taverns, but
began to frequent coffee-houses, because a cup of the newly-
imported Turkish beverage cost only one penny and was supposed
to cure minor ailments? . As early as 1659, Miles's coffee-house
in Palace yard was the meeting place of James Harrington's
club, the 'Rota,' a debating society for the discussion of political
problems. By 1662, the Latine coffee-house, near the stocks, was
the resort of doctors and scholars, and we learn from the amusing
verses of News from the Coffee-house (1667), that, in some places,
the conversation turned on city fashions and foibles as well as on
affairs of state. In 1675, the author of The Coffee-houses Vin-
dicated expresses the true power of these resorts, when he asks
Now whither shall a person, wearied with hard study, or the laborious
turmoils of a tedious day, repair to refresh himself? or where can young
gentlemen, or shop-keepers, more innocently and advantageously spend an
hour or two in the evening, than at a coffee-house? . . .
To read men is
acknowledged more useful than books; but where is there a better library for
that study, generally than here; among such a variety of humours, all ex-
pressing themselves on divers subjects according to their respective abilities ?
Thus, the middle classes had at last found a field in which it
was possible to realise Montaigne's and Cornwallis'ss ideal of
observing human nature, and a literature at once sprang up to
satisfy this new-born curiosity in the humours of coffee-house life.
The Character of a Coffee-house (1673) brilliantly describes, in
true Overburian style, the amateur politicians grouped round
some self-constituted authority and introduces a scathing portrait
of the ‘Town-wit,' the descendant of Dekker’s Gull, who interrupts
citizens' discussions with his obscenity and profane language;
1 See A Cup of Coffee, or Coffee in its Colours, 1663, and A Brief Description of the
Excellent Virtues of that sober and wholesome drink called Coffee and its Incomparable
effects in preventing or curing most diseases incident to Humane Bodies, 1674.
? See The Rota: or the Model of a Free State, or Equal Commonwealth; once pro-
posed and debated in brief and to be again more at large proposed to and debated by
a free and open society of ingenious Gentlemen. And The Censure of the Rota upon
Mr Milton's Book entitled The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.
Both in 1660.
Ante, vol. iv, chap. XVI, p. 344.
3


## p. 390 (#406) ############################################

390 The Advent
of Advent Modern
of Modern Thought
and, in 1677, a volume of conversational anecdotes collected at
these rendezvous was published by Roger L'Estrange! As the
coffee-houses had a mixed clientèle in which republican equality
was the order of the day, the consequent freedom of conversation
and unrestrained display of personality offered a new field for the
writer of dialogues. This genre had already become, in the hands
of such writers as Gifford, king James, Walton and especially
Nicholas Breton, a recognised means of conveying ideas to the
people, and their followers began by choosing coffee-houses merely
to give an attractive background to the discussions. The Coffee
Scuffle (1662), caricaturing a learned argument between a domi-
neering pedant and a man of the world, shows that literary
burlesque could at length find more subtle and refined material
than in the days of Barnabees Journal and Moriomachia, while
two other pamphlets3 turn an essay on popery into a lifelike
discussion between a voluble captain and a supercilious young
lawyer who meet at one of these houses. In these and other
productions of like nature, the arguers begin to be more important
than the argument. The street, the tavern and the home had for
centuries displayed the boorishness or brutality of men; but the
coffee-house revealed oddities of thought and manner far more
interesting to the modern observer. These quaint ideas and
touches of eccentricity were only to be brought out in conversa-
tion, and so the dialogue gradually became a study of character
culminating in some of Addison's charming sketches.
This friendly interest in the peculiarities of character increased
the abhorrence with which men viewed the revilings of the age
of the civil war. The age was bent on mutual respect and con-
sideration. So they turned to the study of letter writing to
cultivate a more suave spirit of intercourse. Davies describes
'the gentler art' as 'the cement of all society, the foundation
and Superstructure of all Friendship and conversation. It is
true that epistolary correspondence had been recognised as a
literary type since the renascence had brought men into touch
with Cicero, Seneca and Guevara, and that, as early as 1586,
6
3
1 Coffee-house Jests. By the author of The Oxford Jests [i. e. W. Hickes).
? See Rules and Orders of the Coffee-house, attached to A Brief Description, 1674.
A Coffee-House Dialogue, 1679, and A Continuation of the Coffee-House Dialogue,
1680.
* See J. Pettus's prefatory letter to Lovedays Letters Domestic and Forreine, edited
by his brother in 1659.
5 Dedic. to Boswell, G. , in Letters of Affaires, Love and Courtship. Written to
Several persons of Honour and Quality: By. . . Monsieur de Voiture, 1657.


## p. 391 (#407) ############################################

Romances
391
>
Angell Day had produced a manual of letter writing ! , while
other writers, including Nicholas Breton” and Joseph Hall}, had
appealed in this form to the public; but, then, the art was being
cultivated as a literary experiment. The new generation were
more interested in courtesy and the expression of mutual respect.
For them, letter writing was a civilising influence. So they looked
for their models, not among the ancients, but at the French court,
where a period of peace and concentrated government had de-
veloped a more refined and intellectual ideal of social life. Thus,
writers who might, thirty years earlier, have revived and adapted
ancient styles of literature, now edited and translated the letters
of Balzac, de la Serre and Voiture, or cast their tractates into an
epistolary form in which the courtesies of this type of literature
were scrupulously observed, as in Metamorphosis Anglorum (1660),
addressed to Don Lewis de Haro. The taste for novels of chivalry+
had never quite died out and now became again fashionable,
because the society of the restoration found in the French
romances that art of sentimental courtship which had again become
the ideal of refinement and high breeding. W. Browne translated
Gomberville's Polexandre in 1647, and other translators followed
him with the romances of La Calprenède and Madeleine de
Scudéry. Paraphrases were followed by imitations. Roger Boyle
published Parthenissa in 1654, Sir George Mackenzie wrote
Aretina in 1661, John Crowne produced his solitary romance
Pandion and Amphigenia in 1665; and, although these composi-
tions are interminably long and loosely constructed, the reader
could learn therein how to turn a compliment, express his passion,
write a love letter and interpret the sentiments of his heart after
the style of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. More practical civilisers
collected anecdotes and apophthegms which might help to teach
good manners. The cult of ana,' like that of the epistolary art,
'
was of ancient origin", and had flourished through the Middle
Ages and the renascence®. But, again, new tendencies led men
away from antiquity. Though compilers of such miscellanies are
1 English Secretary.
2 A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters, 1603.
3 Six Decads of Epistles 1607–10.
4 See Raleigh, W. , The English Novel, 5th ed. 1903, chap. iv, from which these
facts are taken.
5 See Wolf, J. C. , Intro. to Casauboniana, 1710.
* E. g. Gregory the Great's Liber Dialogorum (reminiscences of St Benedict and
his companions, sixth to seventh centuries), Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia, 1566,
Melanchthoniana, 1562.


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392
The Advent of Modern Thought
particularly liable to draw on familiar material', the present
generation preferred anecdotes of king Charles I, the marquis of
Worcester or Sir Thomas More, which culminate in some courtly
phrase or witty but suave rejoinder; and Selden's Table Talk
which Richard Milward probably compiled soon after his death,
would be welcomed because of its tolerance, moderation and
breadth of view.
Now that men had reached this new stage of progress, the
Baconian essay began to lose its value. There were still a few
followers of the old school who, like Thomas Manley», sought
distraction from war and politics by compiling maxims and
meditations out of their desultory reading. But the enthusiasm
for discovering lessons of self-education in the classics now flagged
because the charm of novelty was gone, and the humanists of the
protectorate were too full of the work of reconstruction to centre
their reflections on themselves. Thus, the essay gradually ceased
to be an intellectual diary and showed signs of becoming an organ
for propagating ideas. An exiled royalist with the intention 'to
sport away the tedious houres with the dalliance of my pen’
described his experiences abroad in The Character of Spain and
The Character of Italy (both in 1660). But the two sketches
expand into veritable treatises with their invectives against
Jesuits, papistry, alchemy and the gunpowder plot, varied by
observations on history and sociology.
Men were dissatisfied with their state of culture, because
they had begun to realise its possibilities. The conviction was
steadily growing that scholars, as Waterhouse declared in An
Humble Apologie for Learning and Learned Men (1653), were
‘the Horsmen and Chariots of any Nation’; not an academic
caste, but civilisers. For this reason, they were willing to criticise
that system of half-scholastic education which had nourished the
witch controversy and left many other perplexities unsolved. As
early as 1646, John Hall, in Horae Vacivae, declared that ancient
philosophers should only be studied because they stimulate dis-
cussion on modern topics. In 1653, John Webster4 examined all
the established branches of learning and declared that conservatism
6
1 E. g. Witty Apophthegms . . . by Francis Lord Bacon are current witticisms of an.
tiquity derived originally from Cicero, Suetonius and Plutarch.
? Selden died in 1654; Table Talk, though not published till 1689 is dedicated to
* Mr Justice Hales' i. e. Sir Matthew Hales, who ceased to be judge of the Common
Pleas in 1658. See ed. by Singer, S. W. , Library of Old Authors, 1890.
3 Temporis Angustiae, 1649.
* Academiarum Examen, or the Examination of Academies, 1653.
4


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Humanists
393
was keeping knowledge from shedding any light on life and its
mysteries. In 1657, a writer on education, who signs himself
‘J. B. Gent,' superseded Milton's and Peacham's treatises with the
remarkable Heroick Education. The author gives the death-blow
to formalism by insisting that each pupil has a peculiar in-
dividuality and, therefore, requires a special training. The average
lad of gentle birth is an obscure maze of cross-tendencies which
he has not yet learnt to control, and the tutor's first duty is to
make an intimate study of his character. His pupil is led towards
good or evil by some enjoyment incidental to its pursuit, and the
teacher, by closely watching his appetites, maladies, dreams and
'colour' will be able to find out what particular pleasure appeals to
his instincts. Mental training must be equally unfettered by tra-
dition. The students of the renascence had aimed at accumulating
vast stores of erudition under the control of a quick memory.
But
the youth of the restoration must, also, cultivate 'commonsense,' that
is, wisdom to digest and apply his learning. Nor must his intellectual
individuality be fettered by imitating another's style, ‘for discourse
and writing being images of the soul; everyone expresses his
thoughts differently according to his own genius. ' Now that the
age had realised the necessity for mutual respect and forbear-
ance, the student must acquire tact and address no less than
knowledge and, above all, the knack of adapting himself to
other people's moods and tastes which is the true art of con-
versation1
Humanists were not content with putting knowledge to new
uses. Now that a settled government gave them leisure to catch
the spirit of continental philosophy, writers began, even in popular
productions, to criticise the sources of knowledge itself. Meric
Casaubon brought out A Treatise concerning Enthusiasm (1665)
in which he argues from history and literature that inspiration,
whether in rhetoric, poetry or the actor's craft, and ecstasy,
whether in divination, worship or contemplation, are no super-
natural gift but merely the working of nature and subject to
illusion. The author of Be Merry and Wise, or a Seasonable
Word to the Nation (1660) caught the spirit of his time when he
exhorted his readers to break away from the phrase-making of the
Caroline generation and devote themselves in earnest to the work
of reconstruction, asking 'can anything be more Ridiculous then
to stand Formalizing, in a case where tis impossible to be too early
or too zealous ? ' Joseph Glanvill, in The Vanity of Dogmatizing
1 Part 11, chap. VII.
a


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394
The Advent of Modern Thought
(1661), reminded men how hypothetical and conjectural all know-
ledge was, how unreliable is the evidence of our own senses, and
how completely fantasy and inclination dominate our convictions.
In these and such like books the influence of Van Helmont and
Descartes is evident and still more that of Agrippa, whose De
Vanitate Scientiarum, though partly a burlesque, was reprinted,
translated and often quoted because it insisted that the culture of
the renascence was not all it pretended to be.
Thus, the civil war had given new life to English thought, first
by solving the social and political controversies which had diverted
humanists from better things; then, by exposing, in all their
primitive repulsiveness, the fanaticism and bigotry which, for half
a century, had withstood progress; then, by introducing the habit
of discussion and reflection among the people as a whole, filling
them with the desire for peace, order and mutual tolerance. The
time for a creative genius had not yet come, but it was an age
of criticism and revision, and we have seen how the middle classes
were beginning, on the one hand to cultivate consideration for the
individual and on the other hand to examine dogmas and traditions
in the light of humanity and commonsense. It still remains to
show how all these tendencies led thinkers to continue the vexed
discussion on sorcery and occultism, and, without the aid of fresh
material, to put a new construction on the data which had served
Sprenger, Bodin, Gifford, James, Perkins and Cotta.
Astrology had already been condemned by Chamber and
Carleton ; but the belief in predictions became so widespread
;
during the hazards of the war that, when Lilly prophesied a more
than usually terrible series of disasters, to follow the eclipse of
1652, John Evelyn tells us that the common folk would not 'worke
nor stir out of their houses so ridiculously were they abus'd by
knavish and ignorant stargazers. But the same year saw an
excellent piece of sarcasm on this prophecy, entitled Strange
Predictions, and John Gaule, who had once been a believer in the
superstition, brought out a voluminous refutation? , in which he
attributes the success of astrology to its votaries' eagerness to be
deceived and reminds his readers that, even if a constellation could
affect a new-born babe, the child's training, home-life and social
position will soon supersede such influences.
Other attacks on stargazing followed, but it was the horrors
and iniquities of the witch persecution which chiefly claimed the
i IIûs-martia The Mag. astro-mancer or the Magicall- Astrologicall-Diviner Posed and
Puzzled, 1652.
a


## p. 395 (#411) ############################################

Filmer, Ady and Wagstaffe 395
attention of humanists. Robert Filmer employed the critical
commonsense of his generation to attack Perkins's book in An
advertisement to the Jury-men of England (1653), pointing out
that compacts between the devil and old women, even if mentioned
in the Bible, were hardly a matter for serious consideration, since
the witch can always escape from her obligation by repentance
and is, at the worst, only an accessory in any deed and, therefore,
should not be punished before the principal. Thomas Ady, in
A Candle in the Dark (1656), discussed the subject with the same
practical logic but with a wider knowledge of the world. Like
Harman, Chettle, Greene, Nashe, Dekker and Rowlands, he was
familiar with the jugglers, diviners, ventriloquists and conjurers
who still infested England, and he argues that such as these were
the so-called witches and magicians whom Saul persecuted and
Deuteronomy condemned to death. Fifty years before, Gifford
had silenced the plea for clemency by arguing that witches desire
diabolical power and, therefore, should die. But the present age
was too engrossed in the practical problems of this world to
succumb to such unreasoning fear of the devil, and Ady deems it
sufficient refutation to expose the witchfinder's methods of con-
viction.
Although both Filmer and Ady begin their treatises with the
inevitable discussion on Biblical authority, their work is important
because, like their forerunner Reginald Scot, they brought the
kindly wisdom of daily life into this academic controversy. In this
respect, they prepared the way for John Wagstaffe.
His book,
The Question of Witchcraft debated (1669), makes full use of his
predecessors' appeals to commonsense, but he goes beyond them
by also appealing to secular scholarship and erudition. He
sketches the history of religious persecution, and argues that, from
the days of Maxentius and Theodosius onwards, the church has
endeavoured to suppress heresy, solely in order to extend its own
temporal sovereignty.
Meanwhile, demonology was not in need of apologists. R. T. ,
in The Opinion of Witchcraft Vindicated (1670), attempted
to counteract the effect of Wagstaffe’s book by reminding his
readers, as many demonologists had done, that the devil is a
servant of God, employed on his errands, nor have we any right
to deny his existence because we cannot explain to ourselves
how he acts. Glanvill followed the same line of argument in
Philosophical Considerations touching Witches and Witchcraft
(1666). Meric Casaubon, in Of Credulity and Incredulity (1668)
>


## p. 396 (#412) ############################################

396
The Advent of Modern Thought
discusses many wonders which the enlightenment of his age had
now proved to be natural phenomena. But he is alarmed at the
spread of rationalism and too deeply imbued with reverence for
the Bible to question any doctrines which were supposed to
emanate from that source. So he condemns as atheists and
uneducated all those who denied a league between the devil and
men, and dwells on the enormous volume of testimony, ancient and
modern, literary and judicial, in proof of sorcery. And yet it is
manifest that these scholars were pleading a lost cause. Men
believed in witchcraft so long as its horror, grotesqueness and de-
filement fascinated their imagination. The earlier demonologists
had quoted Scripture and the classics to the full, but their
conviction really rested on the prurient or ghastly anecdotes with
which this superstition abounded. The spell of mystery and horror
still exercised its power over the vulgar, and broadsides continued
to report cases of bewitchment; but the age had learnt to criticise
its own ideas and educated apologists already showed a degree of
sensibility and intellectual refinement quite inconsistent with these
beliefs. The superstition still seemed to thrive because it had
not yet been confronted with the purer, keener outlook of the
restoration.
This was the work of John Webster. His book The Displaying
of supposed Witchcraft (1677) does not contribute any new material
to the controversy ; in fact, he admits himself that the de-
monographers had already been 'quashed and silenced' by Wier,
Tandler, Scot, Ady and Wagstaffe. But, while reproducing their
arguments, whether based on theology or commonsense, he did
more than they all, by bringing the controversy into an atmosphere
in which the superstition could not live : the atmosphere of con-
fidence in nature and reverence for an immaterial God. Now that
Hackwell; Harvey, Newton and Locke were teaching men to in-
vestigate and not fear the mysteries of life, Webster insists that
all evidence in support of sorcery should be subjected to the same
scientific scrutiny. Besides, what need was there to suspect the
handiwork of the devil in any miracle, when ‘Mr Boyl' was able
to 'manifest the great and wonderful virtues that God hath
endowed stones, minerals, plants and roots withal,' when Van
Helmont had already proved that metals have even greater healing
power and Paracelsus had ascribed this power to God. Now that
natural laws were being discovered, Webster represents this God,
not according to the old anthropomorphic ideas, but as a tran-
scendental spirit, who rules men through their thoughts and wills.
Hakewill


## p. 397 (#413) ############################################

John Webster
397
Satan is merely one of the means of communication. Hence, if
there is a league between the devil and a witch, it is 'internal,
mental and spiritual’; the league which always exists between a
malefactor and the spirit of evil. For Webster is the first to point
out—what many of his contemporaries must have felt--that the
current theory of witchcraft was utterly unworthy of the modern
conception of human nature. Neurasthenics, whose imaginations
have been infected with stories of ghosts and goblins, may con-
ceive themselves to be the victims of all kinds of malpractices
and diseases. But the devil only enslaves men by 'their corrupt
wills and dispositions. '
Webster's book by no means drove out superstition. The
belief in necromancy, sortilege and magic exists at the present
time in cities as well as in rural districts and will always be found
wherever the great emotions of life? are wrought to a higher pitch
than the intellect. But The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft
marks the time when this error definitely lost its hold on men's
lower passions and on the sense of human degradation. The
period of witch persecutions has universally been regarded as the
darkest blot on English civilisation and it produced a literature
no less dreary. Witch treatises, with a few exceptions, are
voluminous, rambling and ill-constructed dissertations in which
patristic dogmas and scholastic arguments are endlessly reite-
rated. And yet one is almost tempted to regard this controversy,
together with the civil war pamphlets and the puritan tirades,
as an inevitable phase in the evolution of English modern
thought. Movements like the renascence, which appeal chiefly
to courtiers and scholars, who, after all, are only the surface
of a nation, can well be inspired from foreign sources. But when
a whole people change their attitude of mind, the impulse must
come from within. We have seen how social and political in-
fluences drove popular writers to the most extravagant thoughts
and utterances, thereby creating an atmosphere in which great
works cannot thrive. But, at the same time, it must be remem-
bered that, if informal literature ran to excess, it became, in this
way, a self-exposure, and startled the whole nation into an effort
towards higher civilisation.
1 Cf. Benson, R. H. , The Necromancers, 1910.


## p. 398 (#414) ############################################

BIBLIOGRAPHIES
CHAPTER I
CAVALIER LYRISTS
THOMAS CAREW
8
Collected Works
Poems. By Thomas Carew, Esquire, one of the Gentlemen of the Privie
Chamber, and Sewer in Ordinary to His Majesty. 1640. 2nd ed. 1642.
Poems, with a Maske. 3rd ed. 1651.
Poems, Songs and Sonnets. Together with a Masque. 4th ed. 1671.
Works. Ed. Maitland, T. Edinburgh, 1824.
Poems. Ed. Hazlitt, W. C. Roxburghe Library.