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IDEAS of the RESTORATION in ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1660-71 by the Same Author

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IDEAS of the RESTORATION in ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1660-71 by the Same Author IDEAS OF THE RESTORATION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1660-71 By the same author THE POSSESSION OF AMBER (short stories) IDEAS OF THE RESTORATION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1660-71 Nicholas Jose © Nicholas Jose 1984 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1984 978-0-333-34604-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1984 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-06637-7 ISBN 978-1-349-06635-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06635-3 For my parents Contents Abbreviations Vlll Preface XI The State Chaos 2 New Order 17 3 Ideas of Restoration I : The Panegyric Task 31 4 Ideas of Restoration II : Looking Back and Looking Forward 44 5 Ideal Restoration and the Case of Cowley 67 6 The Poetry of the Second Dutch War 97 7 Theatrical Restoration 120 8 Samson Agonistes: The Play Turned Upside Down 142 9 Conclusion : Artifice and Scrutiny 164 Notes 175 Index 200 Vll Abbreviations The following abbreviations have been used for works frequently cited. Unless otherwise stated, the place of publication is London. The original spelling and punctuation of the editions cited have been followed in all cases, except for some slight alteration of capitalisation of minor words in seventeenth-century titles. Carey and Fowler The Poems of}ohn Milton, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler ( 1968). All quotations from Milton's poems are from this edition. Cowley, Essays Abraham Cowley, Essays, Plays and Sundry Verses, ed. A.R. Waller (Cambridge, 1906). Cowley, Poems Abraham Cowley, Poems: Miscellanies, The Mistress, Pindarique Odes, Davideis, Verses Written Upon Several Occasions, ed. A.R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905). All quotations from Cowley, unless otherwise stated, are from Waller's editions. CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series. Davies Godfrey Davies, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658-1660 (San Marino, 1955). DNB Dictionary of National Biography. Evelyn The Diary of}ohn Evelyn, ed. E.S. de Beer (6vols, Oxford, 1955). Vlll Abbreviations lX Kinsley The Poems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley (4 vols, Oxford, 1958). All quotations from Dryden's poems are from this edition unless otherwise stated. Margoliouth The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H.M. Margoliouth, revised by Pierre Legouis with the collaboration of E.E. Duncan-Jones (2 vols, Oxford, 1971). All quotations from Marvell are from this edition unless otherwise stated. Masson David Masson, The Life ofJohn Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time (6 vols, and index, 1880-94). Milton, Complete Prose Complete Prose Worksof]ohn Milton, general ed., Don M. Wolfe (7 vols, New Haven and London, 1953-74). Ogg David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II (2 vols, Oxford, 1934). Pepys The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews ( ll vols, 1970- ). POAS Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714, general ed., George de F. Lord (7 vols, New Haven and London, 1963-75). STC Short- Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700, compiled by Donald Wing (3 vols, New York, 1945-51 ). Preface At several key places in his poetry Alexander Pope refers to the Restoration. The references, though judicious, are unflattering. Pope found it hard to admire the reign of the merry monarch. The Restoration was a classic example of Pope's perception that artistic and social decadence were reflected in each other. In Days of Ease, when now the weary Sword Was sheath'd, and Luxury with Charles restor'd; In every Taste of foreign Courts improv'd, 'All by the King's Example, liv'd and lov'd.' Then Peers grew proud in Horsemanship t'excell, New-market's Glory rose, as Britain's fell; The Soldier breath'd the Gallantries of France, And ev'ry flow'ry Courtier writ Romance. Then Marble soften'd into life grew warm, And yielding Metal flow'd to human form: Lely on animated Canvas stole The sleepy Eye, that spoke the melting soul. No wonder then, when all was Love and Sport, The willing Muses were debauch'd at Court; On each enervate string they taught the Note To pant, or tremble thro' an Eunuch's throat. But Britain, changeful as a Child at play, Now calls in Princes, and now turns away. Now Whig, now Tory, what we lov'd we hate; Now all for Pleasure, now for Church and State; Now for Prerogative, and now for Laws; Effects unhappy! from a Noble Cause. (Imitations of Horace, Ep.II i, 139-60) 1 XI Xll Preface Yet Pope's regretful tone reveals another dimension to his vision of the Restoration. It was impossible to deny the direct continuity between the earlier age and his own, and it was necessary to recognise a debt. The Augustan ideals which so inspired - and disturbed - Pope and many of his contemporaries were first established in English terms, politically, socially and culturally, at the Restoration. The Stuart line was re-established at the Restoration : its splendid swansong was to come in Pope's own time with Anne, when 'Peace and Plenty tell, a STUART reigns' (Windsor Forest, 42). The poet laureate of the Restoration was john Dryden, Pope's acknowledged master. Johnson reports that Pope, less than twelve-years-old, 'persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house which Dryden frequented, and pleased himself with having seen him'.~ Later Pope was to take a rather more superior attitude towards Dryden, but, if he hinted that Dryden could be bettered, he always admitted that Dryden had dictated the terms: Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine. Tho' still some traces of our rustic vein And splay-foot verse, remain'd, and will remain. Late, very late, correctness grew our care, When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war. (Imitations of Horace: Ep.II i, 267-73) Pope's attitude to the Restoration was complex. If its aspirations provided him with a set of standards, its shortcomings gave him a warning, and both were relevant to his own world. Above all the Restoration intensified Pope's conviction that a society's art was a measure of its moral vitality. When he created his visionary indictment of his own society the Restoration offered an additional frame of reference. Colley Cibber, the imperial king of Dulness, 'the Antichrist of wit', is proclaimed in an echo of that passage in the Aeneid (VI, 791-4) which Dryden recalled when trumpeting Charles in Astraea Redux 1660 (320-3): This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes: Th' Augustus born to bring Saturnian times. (The Dunciad, III, 319-20) Preface Xlll When in Book IV the poet contemplates the terrifying bond between 'Arbitrary Sway' and Dulness, he is once again drawn to a Stuart motif ' "The RIGHT DIVINE of Kings to govern wrong" ' (IV, 175-88). Finally, when the curtain of universal darkness falls, we witness the ultimate mocking apotheosis of imperial renovation: Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd; Light dies before thy uncreating word .... (IV, 653-4) Behind this moment of restoration lies the force of Pope's fascinated terror and despair at historical dreams. The Restoration has remained a focal point for considering the connexion between social and cultural ill-health. In his Essay on Criticism Pope attacked the corruptive power of court-condoned pornography in Charles's reign (534-49), and still in recent times the debate has continued to rage about Restoration comedy. 3 When Lord Macaulay came to deliver his verdict on the age, he did so, following Pope, in terms of its moral conduct: 'scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing immorality'. Macaulay found a direct link between the political exigencies of the age and its immorality: 'it is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact that the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith were precisely the years during which national virtue was at the lowest point'. And he found such depravity not merely reflected in but promoted by literature: 'poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire'. 4 Macaulay's most vivid engagement with the period occurred when he turned to Restoration drama. He observed there a kind oflife he deemed hardly worthy of even the remotest corners of the Ep1pire: 'we find ourselves in a world in which the ladies are like very profligate, impudent and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island'. 'In the whole dramatic literature of the generation which followed the return of Charles the Second' Macaulay found a 'systematic attempt to associate vice with those things which men value most and desire most and virtue with every thing ridiculous and degrading.' He regarded this 'systematic attempt' almost as a political programme, and raised his literary evaluation of the plays to an indictment of the age: 'it XIV Preface must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom we have spoken thus severely, that they were to a great extent the creatures of their age'. And finally Macaulay, like Pope, laid the blame for the age on the social irresponsibility of the government: 'to punish public outrage on morals and religion is unquestionably within the competence of rulers'." Both Pope and Macaulay simplified the Restoration for their own purposes, but the degree of distortion is instructive.
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