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CHAPTER I

THE DECLINE

1630-1660

THE decline of letters in England began almost as soon as Shakespeare was in his grave, and by the death of James I. had become obvious. The period which we have now to consider was illuminated by several names of very high genius both in prose and verse, and by isolated works of extraordinary value and beauty. In spite, however, of the lustre which these give to it, no progress was made for thirty years in the general structure of literature; at best, things remained where they were, and, in literary history, to stop still is to go back. It is possible that we should have a different tale to tell if the most brilliant Englishman who survived Shakespeare had realised what it was possible to do with the tongue of his country. At the close of James's reign Francis Bacon stood, as Ben Jonson put it, "the mark and acme of our language," but he gave its proficients little encouragement. He failed, for all his intuition, to recognise the turn of the tide; he thought that books written in English would never be citizens of the world. Anxious to address Europe, the universe, he felt no interest in his English contemporaries, and passed through the sublime age of Elizabethan poetry without conceding the fact of its existence.

When Bacon died, in 1626, he left English literature painfully im- Burton poverished. For the next fifteen years it may be said that prose of the higher kind scarcely existed, and that there threatened to be something like a return to barbarism. But a work which belongs to a slightly earlier period must first of all be discussed. No book is more characteristic of the coming age, of its merits alike and of its faults, than that extraordinary emporium, the Anatomy of Melancholy, first issued in 1621. ROBERT BURTON, a clergyman, mainly resident at Christchurch, Oxford, was the author of this vast monograph on what we should now call neurasthenia. The text of Burton has been unkindly styled a collection of clause-heaps, and he is a typical example of that extreme sinuosity, one of the detestable tricks of the schools, to which the study of the ancients betrayed our early seventeenthcentury prose-writers. Of the width of reading of such men as Bacon and Burton and Hales there have been no later specimens, and these writers, but Burton above all others, burden their folio pages with a

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gorgeous spoil of "proofs" and "illustrations" from the Greek and Latin authors. The Anatomy of Melancholy, though started as a plain medical dissertation, grew to be, practically, a huge cento of excerpts from all the known (and unknown) authors of Athens and Rome. All Burton's treasure was in Minerva's Tower, and the chamber that he fitted up there has been the favourite haunt of scholars in every generation. In his own his one book enjoyed a prodigious success, for it exactly suited and richly indulged the temper of the time. But Burton, delightful as he is, added nothing to the evolution of English prose in this its dangerous hour of

crisis. The vogue of his entertaining neurotic compendium really tended to retard the purification of the language.

Robert Burton (15771640) was born at Lindley, in Leicestershire, on the 8th of February 1577- His father was a country gentleman, Ralph Burton. He was educated at Nuneaton and at Sutton Coldfield schools, and in 1593 he was entered as a commoner of Brasenose College, Oxford, whence, in 1599, he passed to Christ Church as a student. He took orders in 1614, scarcely any record of his earlier career at the University having been preserved, but in 1616 we find him presented to the vicarage of St. Thomas's, Oxford. This, and the rectory of Segrave which Lord Berkeley gave him in 1630, he kept "with much

Burton suffered from the

ado to his dying day." The famous Anatomy of Melancholy first appeared in 1621, and was written by Burton in his rooms in college. hypochondria he described; we are told that "he would fall into such a state of despondency that he could only get relief by going to the bridge-foot at Oxford, and hearing the bargemen swear at one another." He was evidently looked upon as a very original character at Oxford, and his "merry, facete, and juvenile" conversation was much sought after. Burton died in his college rooms, not without suspicion of suicide, on the 25th of January 1640, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. A Latin comedy of Philosophaster, written by Burton in 1606, remained in MS. until 1862.

Chillingworth

FROM THE "ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY"

Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on, like a Siren, a shooing-horn, or some Sphinx, to this irrevocable gulf; a primary cause, Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most; amabilis insania, and mentis gratissimus error. A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholize and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done. . . . So delightsome are these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in such contemplations and fantastical meditations, which are like unto dreams; and they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt. So pleasant their vain conceits are, that they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary business; they cannot address themselves to them, or almost to any study or employment: these fantastical and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urgently, so continually, set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract and detail them, they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholizing and carried along, as he (they say) that is led round about an heath with a Puck in the night.

Probably the strongest prose work produced in England during the dead time of which we are speaking is WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH'S Religion of Protestants (1637). This divine was somewhat slighted in his own age, as giving little show of learning in his discourses; but the perspicuity of his style and the force of his reasoning commended him to the Anglican divines of the Restoration. It is characteristic that Tillotson had a great admiration for this humane latitudinarian, and that Locke wrote, "If you would have your son reason well, let him read Chillingworth."

William Chillingworth (1602-1644) was a son of a mayor of Oxford of the same name; he was born in that city in October 1602. In 1618 he became a scholar of Trinity College, took his degree in 1620, and in 1628 was elected fellow of his college. The famous Jesuit, John Fisher (whose real name was John Percy), was now very active in Oxford, and Chillingworth became one of his converts. He retired to Douai, but Laud. who took a great interest in him, kept up a correspondence with him, and persuaded him in 1631 to leave the Jesuits and return to Oxford. He was still a Catholic, but about the year 1634 his scruples were removed and he finally declared for Protestantism. Chillingworth was taunted with inconsistency of temper and judgment, and he began his Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation as an apologia; it appeared in 1637. Before this, he had been urged to take orders in the Church of England, but his conscience had been too sensitive. In 1638, however, these difficulties also were removed, and Chillingworth became Chancellor to the diocese of Salisbury, with the prebend of Brixworth attached. He was a zealous Royalist, and took part, more as a military engineer than as a chaplain, in the siege of Gloucester. He was taken prisoner at the surrender of Arundel Castle in December 1643. He was already ill, and was permitted, when the rest of the prisoners were marched to London, to be carried to the Bishop's palace in Chichester, where he died on the 30th of January 1644. He was originally denied