392

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

C ri P ’ would have been well if our writers had also copied

iramora- the decorum which their great French contemporaries, withpolite tb ° fe w exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the Englishmature plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blotland.” on our national fame. The evil may easily be traced to itssource. The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendlyterms. There was no sympathy between the two classes.They looked on the whole system of human life from differentpoints and in different lights. The earnest of each was thejest of the other. The pleasures of each were the tormentsof the other. To the stern precisian even the innocent sportof the fancy seemed a crime. To light and festive naturesthe solemnity of the zealous brethren furnished copiousmatter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the civil war,almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the ludicrous,had taken some opportunity of assailing the straight haired,snuffling, whining saints, who christened their children outof the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at the sightof Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to tasteplum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time camewhen the laughers began to look grave in their turn. Therigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much goodsport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered,ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet thewhole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay andpetulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy and im-placable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their ownrancour for virtue. The theatres were closed. The playerswere flogged. The press was put under the guardianship of’ austere licensers. The Muses were banished from their ownfavourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowley, Crashaw,and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. Theyoung candidate for academical honours was no longer re-quired to write Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but