REVIEWS 397

After a brief introduction spelling out his principal themes, Professor Steadman divides his argument into two sections Part One, 'Bardic Voices', consists of two chapters on the persona of the divinely inspired poet, the first on DuBartas and Spenser, the second on Milton In all three cases, Steadman argues, the author's self-charactenzation as an agent of the muse is a literary convention rather than a literal claim to prophetic authority 'The persona of the inspired poet and seer, fostered by both Spenser and Milton (and, much Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/XLVIII/191/397/1615620 by guest on 28 September 2021 less effectively, by DuBartas)', he writes, 'is a carefully contrived fiction The visionary narrator is himself a consciously composed illusion and should not, of course, be mistaken far autobiographical "fact"' (p 70) Part Two, 'Poetic Structure and Moral Vision', contains five chapters on the theory and practice of romance and epic narrative, the first four on Spenser and the fifth on Milton The focus here is much less clear than in Part One, and the argument sometimes lapses into rather laboured paraphrase of the poetic text itself, as in the case of the following account of Eve's temptation 'Resorting to a series of animal disguises to avoid detection in Eden, [Satan] tempts Eve initially in the form of a toad and subsequently—and successfully—in the body of a serpent In the second temptation he deceives Eve not only with flattery but also with downright lies about the Creator and his injunction and about the seemingly miraculous properties of the forbidden fruit' (p 154) Disappoint- ingly, the culminating chapter on Paradise Lost is only fourteen pages long, and only a few of those pages treat the epic itself (the first eight rehearse the familiar story of the evolution of Milton's plans for an epic and his ambiguous attitude towards the romance tradition) The book concludes with a brief epilogue restating Professor Steadman's conviction that m recent years cntics have 'earned their interpretation of [Milton's] resort to the bardic voice and the fiction of the poet-prophet (or vates) beyond the bounds of reason and literary tact' (p 164) As all this may suggest, the fundamental problem with this study is that it does not seem to be written for any clearly defined readership Parts of it, notably those on the poet's claims to divine inspiration, seem to be addressed primarily to the author's fellow scholars and cntics, but other sections, with their prolonged recitals of information that will already be familiar to any specialist in the field, read more like an introduction designed for an audience of undergraduate English majors The book has been carefully edited, and I noticed no obvious typographical errors Stanford University J MARTIN EVANS

The Writings of John Evelyn Edited by Guv DE LA BEDOYZRE Pp 436 Woodbndge The Boydell Press, 1995 £39 50 Science and (he Shape of Orthodoxy Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth- Century Britain By MICHAEL HUNTER Pp xn+346*27 illustrations Woodbndge The Boydell Press, 1995 £55 John Evelyn's long career was devoted to the dissemination of useful knowledge and the improvement of taste His wntings illustrate so many aspects of intellectual life in the second half of the seventeenth century that they must form pan of any attempt to understand the broad Restoration desire to modernize, methodize, and refine the ways of thinking and the style of living in post-Commonwealth England Yet Evelyn's wnungs, with the exception of the Diary, have been hard to get hold of, and the majority of his shorter pieces were last published in a bulky folio in 1825 So one welcomes this new selection, despite the fact that the introduction, by Guy de la Bedoyere, is disappointing, offenng somewhat loo simple a view both of Evelyn's intellectual formation and of his cultural milieu The centrepiece of this collection is a repnnting of the 1664 edition of Syloa, Evelyn's treatise on abonculture elicited by the Royal Society and inspired by the

RES New Scne», Vol XLVTJI, No 191 (1997) O Oxford Unuxmtj Prtti 1997 398 REVIEWS need to replant the estates of England after the excessive loss of timber during the Civil Wars and in the 1650s, when the confiscated royalist estates were stripped of their woody assets Sylva was the mainstay of Evelyn's reputation until the discovery and publication of the Diary in 1818 Interesting as this work is as a prime specimen of Evelyn's publtc- spmtedness, and of his desire to improve cultivation in line with the ideals of Francis Bacon and Samuel Harthb, the section that is most rewarding to the modern reader is the 'Historical Account of the Sacredness and Use of Standing Groves' which was added to Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/XLVIII/191/397/1615620 by guest on 28 September 2021 the second and subsequent editions, but is not reprinted in the present volume Abandoning his Royal Society brief, Evelyn soars off into an imaginative discourse on the sanctity and mystenousness of trees throughout time that reveals the peculiar and distinctive sense of divinity that sometimes accompanied his absorption in horticultural matters It is the public face of Evelyn we meet all the way through this collection, and appropriately so, for he always sought to influence the public domain He wanted to change so much, and a great deal of his reformist zeal arose from his dissatisfaction with England's social backwardness His Character of England of 1659, a survey of national habits that he pretended was translated from the French, is full of scorn for English manners and dress The pamphlet gave him an opportunity to express his Anglican disgust at the boonshness of sectarian behaviour and the grotesquencs of Puritan preaching and prayer Tyrannui or the Mode of 1665 vented his witty dismay at the confusion of costume that prevailed after the Restoration, while making the debatable point that a nation needs to establish a firm identity in its costume before it can go on to assert itself in the world Evelyn was seriously concerned that England should present a nobler image of herself, one more in keeping with her growing power and intellectual eminence, in practice that meant tidying up London Fumifugium (1661) was one work directed to that end, with its proposals to remove all the trades and manufactories that filled the capital with smoke (Evelyn also suggested filling the city with aromatic airs from great plantations of thyme and lavender) Londimum Redtmvum of 1666 sketched what could be done to rebuild the city after the Great Fire, proposing an Augustan metropolis filled with amenities One senses that Evelyn would have approved of an enlightened despot to rule England, for he needed an autocrat to impose his grand schemes on a recalcitrant people All in all, this is a serviceable collection of Evelyn's work, it would be more so if it could be brought out in paperback A far more authoritative introduction to Evelyn's work can be denved from Michael Hunter's admirable essay in his volume Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy, where he explores the range of Evelyn's aspirations dunng the formauve years of the 1650s The whole body of his later schemes and publications can be found in embryo in this period when, denied public employment on account of his royalism, he had time to plan a career as connoisseur, savant, and horticulturist Two extensive projects were seminal, though neither of them reached publication his 'History of Trades' led on to Sylva and his studies of engraving and architecture, and his 'Elysium Bntannium' gave rise to most of his works about gardening and cultivation Hunter credibly identifies in Evelyn's early projects a conscious design to introduce aspects of French culture into England, with the intention of bringing more clarity and method into English affairs Translations of treatises on neoclassical architecture, the creation of libraries, and improved forms of garden design were part of this mission, along with his concern with metropolitan reconstruction Hunter's presentation of Evelyn's complex cultural portfolio is one of a number of studies of seventeenth-century figures who were associated with the Royal Society, and who had that broad spread of interests characteristic of the Restoration virtuoso Ashmole, Wren, and Flamsteed are shrewdly assessed here Along with these case-histories come a number of articles on the progress of the New Science in England, and others on the

RES New Sene*, Vol XLVIII, No 191 (1997) © Oxford Unwemtj Pttti 1997 REVIEWS 399

encounters between the new methodology and older, often esoteric, forms of knowledge and belief This is a fine gathering of neatly interconnecting essays, most of them already published elsewhere, their grouping together here allows Michael Hunter to make some important generalizations about the nature of intellectual change in early modern England His polemical introduction demands attention, claiming that it is no longer justifiable to view the growth of a scientific mentality in terms of polanzation, of Ancients versus Moderns, progressives against conservatives, or experimentalists against the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/XLVIII/191/397/1615620 by guest on 28 September 2021 adherents to received opinion In practice, individual practitioners exhibited such bewildering combinations of opinion—advanced or orthodox or obscurantist—that they cannot be categorized with any firmness The more one knows about an individual's activities, through manuscripts or published works, the more one becomes aware of a unique mix of proclivities Belief in the steady advance of empiricism and experimental science must give way to an acceptance of a kaleidoscopic jumble which includes ideas that have a future and opinions that had a past Here is a call for further particularized studies of Restoration intellectuals and virtuosi, without the expectauon that any distinct trends will be confirmed The case-histones that Michael Hunter prints here go a long way to substantiating his case, but one suspects that the traditional desire to read a progressive history of empirical science out of the later seventeenth century will prevail over Hunter's meticulous scepticism

University of York GRAHAM PARRY

Four Restoration Marriage Plays Thomas Otway, The Souldters' Fortune, Natha- niel Lee, The Princess of Cleves, John Dryden, Amphitryon, or The Two Sostas, Thomas Southerne, The Wives' Excuse, or, Cuckolds Make Themselves Edited by M CORDNER with R CLAYTON Pp lx+440 (World's Classics) Oxford and New York Oxford University Press, 1995 £6 99 To playgoers and students, Restoration comedy usually means the plays of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, and some by Farquhar and Vanbrugh Around that narrow canon there has emerged the identification of the genre with courtship and witty love duels In the last twenty years Robert D Hume and others have shown that the genre is much more diverse The new World's Classics edition of four Restoration marriage plays outside the canon is a further step towards a more balanced appreciation of Restoration comedy The plays are expertly chosen and edited Michael Cordner and Ronald Clayton provide modernized texts of Thomas Otway's The Souldters' Fortune, Nathaniel Lee's The Pnncess of Cleves, John Dryden's Amphitryon, and Thomas Southeme's The Wives' Excuse The editors profess to offer 'as stylistically and tonally various a selection as possible' (p xin), a claim which the collection fullyjustifies Each of the four plays evinces the keen responsiveness of Restoration comedy to social and political change The Souldters' Fortune (1680), written and performed at the time of the Popish Plot and the Whigs' attempts at Exclusion, exposes the social and political anxieties of a nation in crisis Otway pitches disbanded soldiers against a gullible Whig sympathizer in a courtship-cum-cuckolding tangle and studs his sexually explicit dialogue with the stock terms of current parliamentary debates, pamphlet literature, and coffee-house polemic Yet The Souldiers' Fortune is more than a blending of sex and politics The play alerts the audience to unresolved conflicts within the family and the state, but denies it an unproblematic or happy ending The Princess of Cleves (1682') subverts the expectations of an audience familiar with Lee's French source, Mme de Lafayette's La Pnnceste de Cleves Lee transforms Lafayette's romance into a searching exploration of the contending myths constructed around the figure of the late earl of Rochester Dryden's virtuoso adaptation of Plautus and Moliere in Amphitryon (1690) offers, in its humorous interrogation of

RES New Senei, Vol XLVDI, No 191 (1997) O Oxford Unutmty Prm 1997