people. Though the King of England is the official head of the English church, both were also Catholics, Charles secretly and James openly. Matters came to a head in 1688; Parliament expelled James; William, Prince of Orange, was set up as king in his place; and the principle that the monarch does not rule by divine right but by the consent of the governed was thus permanently established.

Charles II was described by one of his own courtiers, the Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), as a merry monarch, scandalous and poor. This same nobleman pinned upon the king's bedroom door the following epitaph:

“Here lies our sovereign lord, the King,

Whose word no man relies on;

He never says a foolish thing,

And never does a wise one."

"This is true," said the good-humored monarch when he saw the lines," and the reason is that my words are my own and my acts are my ministers"." When James urged Charles to guard against assassination, Charles said: "Nobody would kill me to make you king.”

The character of the ruler, as was to have been expected, colored the lighter literature of the time. In his court he was surrounded by a mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. In his "Essay on Translated Verse," one of these, the Earl of Roscommon (1633-1684), wrote at least one memorable couplet:

"Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.'

A second of them, Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649–1720), in his "Essay on Poetry," has these fine lines:

"Of all those arts in which the wise excell,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.”
"Read Homer once and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read
And Homer will be all the books you need."

A third, Sir Charles Sedley (1639–1701), produced several good love songs. The Earl of Dorset (1638–1706), a fourth, was the author of an excellent ballad, "To the Ladies at Home." A fifth, Thomas D'Urfey (1653–1723), wrote bad songs of his own and made a col

lection of the good ones of other men, which he published under the title, "Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy."

A greater poet than any of these, however, was Samuel Butler (1612-1680), who obtained little court favor, though he set the whole world laughing at the Puritans when in 1663 he published his Hudibras," which at once became the King's vade mecum. The rewards which he received from Charles for this, the greatest satire in the English language, were several unkept promises and twenty years of obscure misery. In his poem, Sir Hudibras, a Puritan colonel, like Don Quixote, being half crazy, goes out to seek adventures and finds a plenty. They are related with immense spirit, brilliant wit, and occasional bursts of poetry. A few quotations will give an idea of Butler's powers:

As metaphysic wit can fly."

And prove their doctrine orthodox

By apostolic blows and knocks."

"As if religion were intended

For nothing else but to be mended."

"But those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other's sake;
For one for verse and one for rhyme
I think's sufficient at one time."

"For what is worth in anything
But so much money as 'twill bring?"
"The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn."

"For those that fly may fight again,
Which he can never do that's slain."
"He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still."
"Rather than fail, they will defy

That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with mince pies and disparage

Their best and dearest friend, plum porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,

And blaspheme custard through the nose."

The drama suffered even more than poetry from the corruption of the age. When the Restoration came, the theatres, after being closed for eighteen years, were again thrown open; stages in most essentials like those we have to-day took the place of the rude platforms of Elizabethan days; and for the first time in England the parts of women were played by actresses. The plays of Shakespeare were revived with some applause, though those of Beaumont and Fletcher were twice as popular, and a host of new dramatists began to write. Many of these pillaged without scruple from the old English playwrights, from the French, and from the Spanish, but at least five of them were powerful and original writers. The first of these was Thomas Otway (1651-1685), who starved to death, but whose tragedies, "The Orphan " and " Venice Preserved," long held the stage by virtue of their power to excite the passions of pity and fear. Some idea of his style may be obtained from these lines:

66

Such sights as youthful poets dream,

Or happy painters fancy when they love."

"O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
There's in you all that we believe of heaven,—
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love."

"What mighty ills have not been done by woman! Who was it betrayed the Capitol?-A woman! Who lost Mark Antony the world?-A woman! Who was the cause of a long ten years' war, And laid at last old Troy in ashes?-Woman!" William Wycherley (1640-1715) wrote two entertaining comedies, "The Country Wife" and "The Plaindealer." The only good action of his whole life, according to Macaulay, was to try to get for Samuel Butler the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham. His Grace con

sented to see the illustrious author of "Hudibras," who was sinking into an obscure grave, neglected by a nation proud of his genius and by a court which he had served too well; but two pretty women passed by, the Duke ran after them, and the opportunity was lost. William Congreve (1670-1728) produced with great success" The Old Bachelor,' "The Double Dealer," "Love for Love," "The Way of the World," and "The Mourning Bride." The first four are comedies, the last a tragedy. Dryden considered them equal to Shakespeare's plays. George Farquhar, who died at twenty-nine in 1707, achieved a brilliant success with "The Beaux' Stratagem," but in his less famous plays there is no lack of spirit or comedy. These plays, however, are all disfigured by hardness of heart and by a licentiousness that remained unparalleled in our literature until the early years of the twentieth century. Their immorality, contrary as it was to the English temper, was stingingly rebuked and driven off the stage by Jeremy Collier (1650– 1726), who in 1698 published his "Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage," a book which makes one wonder what he would say about the plays of 1915 and wish that he might revisit earth for the purpose of castigating them.

The prose of the Restoration period, indeed, was on the whole dignified and creditable. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), soldier, scientist, professor of Greek, and theologian, won a great and deserved fame by his sermons. Robert South (1634-1716), the wittiest of English divines, splendidly eloquent in the pulpit, hated vice almost as much as he hated the Puritans. John Evelyn (1620-1706) kept a diary which shows him to have been a high-minded gentleman and which is one of our best sources of information for the seventy years it covers. Sir Walter Scott said he had never seen a mine so rich. Among other things Evelyn speaks of an hour's sermon as short, of ladies painting their faces as a novelty, and of the Alps as the rubbish of the earth swept up by Nature to clear the plains of Lombardy. Still more entertaining is the diary of Samuel Pepys (1663-1703) from 1660 to 1669. He was such a useful public servant that Charles II honored him to the extent of borrowing 28,000 pounds from him, which he never repaid. His diary, kept in shorthand, was not deciphered until 1822. It gives a matchless picture of the times.

Here are a few of his sentences: "To Sir W. Pen's, to visit him." "To church, and slept all the sermon." "S. P. Q. R.; Sir G. Carteret came to me to know what the meaning of those four letters were; which ignorance is not to be borne in a Privy Councillor, methinks, what a schoolboy should be whipt for not knowing." "It being washing day, we had a good pie baked of a leg of mutton." News comes

that one of our horses is stole, which proves my uncle's, at which I am inwardly glad I mean, that it was not mine." To my great sorrow I find myself 43 1. worse than I was the last month. But it hath chiefly arisen from my layings-out in clothes for myself and wife; viz., for her about 12£, and for myself 55£." "The Protector never needed to send for any man twice." "A gentleman never dances so well as the dancing master." "Comes Mr. Reeve, with a microscope, for which I did give him 5£ 1s. 10d." My wife was angry with