CONTEMPORANEOUS WRITERS.

POETS.

Edmund Waller (1605-1687).—Poet and politician. First a Republican, then a Royalist. Author of many short poems, most of which consist of elegant and polished verses, and but little else.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667).-One of the most popular poets of his day. Began writing poetry when a boy; published a volume when only thirteen years of age. Author of Pindaric Odes, Davideis, and Love Verses. His Ode to Anacreon is one of his best.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674).—One of the sweetest lyric writers of his time. Educated at Cambridge. Author of Cherry Ripe, To Daffodils, Gather ye Rosebuds while ye May, and many other beautiful songs.

Sir John Suckling (1609–1642?).- -A Cavalier poet. A writer of some beautiful lyric poems, his Ballad of a Wedding being one of his best.

PROSE-WRITERS.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).-An eminent writer on politics and moral philosophy. Author of Leviathan and Translations of Homer in Verse.

Izaak Walton (1593–1683).—A delightful writer, who kept a linen-draper's store to the age of fifty. His best work is The Compleat Angler, a classic still much admired. Author also of the Lives of Walton, Hooker, Herbert, and others, all written in a beautiful and simple style.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661).-Known as "quaint old Thomas Fuller." A witty English divine. Educated at Queen's College, Cambridge. Author of The Worthies of England, Church History of Britain, and other works.

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667).—The greatest theological writer of the English Church in his day. Educated at Cambridge. A brilliant writer of essays. His most popular work is Holy Living and Holy Dying. He was author also of a treatise On the Liberty of Prophesying.

Edward Hyde, EARL OF CLARENDON (1608-1674).—An eminent Royalist and author. His greatest work is his History of the Rebellion.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).—An eccentric but powerful writer. Was a practicing physician. His greatest works are Religion of a Physician, Vulgar Errors, and Hydriotaphia, a treatise on urn-burial.

Algernon Sidney (1621-1683). —A celebrated Republican writer. Son of the Earl of Leicester. Was beheaded in 1683. His chief work is Discourses on Government.

Dr. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677).—A noted mathematician and writer. A professor at Cambridge. Author of a number of mathematical works in Latin. Author also of a number of theological treatises.

Samuel Pepys (1632-1703).—Son of a London tailor. Became secretary to the Admiralty. Author of an amusing Diary, in which the life of the times is depicted in the minutest details.

Dr. Richard Baxter (1615–1691).—A great Puritan divine. Author of The Saints' Everlasting Rest, A Narrative of My Own Life and Times, and other works, numbering altogether one hundred and sixty-eight.

IV.

AGE OF THE RESTORATION.

1660-1700.

REIGNS OF CHARLES II., JAMES II., WILLIAM and Mary.

NOT only the social life of the nation, but also the literature of this age, was in marked contrast to that of the age of Milton. The Protectorate of Cromwell having been overthrown, and Charles II. having been restored to the throne, all the vices and fashions of the gay Cavaliers were made to take the place of the austerity of their Puritan predecessors. English morals and English literature both were debauched. Much of the literature of this age, particularly that of a dramatic character, was debased, and made to pander to the licentious taste of the age. An utter absence of modesty and shame characterized the mode of life of the ruling class, and many of the writings of the period were accordingly tainted with this moral poison.

6. JOHN DRYDEN,

1631-1700.

JOHN DRYDEN, the most eminent poet of the Restoration, was born of Puritan parents on the 9th of August, 1631. He received his preliminary education at the famous school of Dr. Busby at Westminster, and then became a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated without special distinction four years

Later. On the death of Oliver Cromwell, Dryden wrote a glowing eulogium on that hero, but two years later he changed his politics, became a Royalist, and wrote a poem celebrating the restoration of Charles II. to the throne.

His income from his father's estate being but sixty pounds a year, Dryden was compelled to resort to literature as a profession. Books then had but a limited sale, and much the most profitable writing was that of a dramatic or theatrical character. He therefore devoted himself to the writing of plays, entering into a contract to supply three dramas each year. He thus produced play after play in rapid succession, but all, it is said, were tainted with the licentiousness of that shameless age.

Dryden's dramatic career began about the year 1662, and a year later he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire; but the union did not prove a happy one, his wife having been of a querulous disposition.

His first great poem, the Annus Mirabilis, appeared in 1667. It was designed to commemorate the terrible calamities of the preceding year--the Fire of London, the Plague, and the war with the Dutch. The poem was made the vehicle for eulogizing the King, and Dryden was made poet-laureate and historiographer to the King, with a salary of one hundred pounds a year and a tierce of wine worth an additional hundred pounds.

In 1681 the first part of his great work, Absalom and Achitophel, appeared, in which he attacks the most noted men of the corrupt English court, assigning to them names borrowed from the Old Testament.

In 1684 he produced Religio Laici, a vigorous defense of the English Church against the Dissenters, and in 1687 he changed his religion again, becoming a Roman

Catholic. In defense of his course he produced another poem, The Hind and the Panther, in which he represents the Roman Catholic Church as a "milk-white hind," and the Church of England as a "panther, the fairest of the spotted kind."

When William and Mary came to the throne Dryden. lost his laureateship, and he again resorted to his pen for a living. His translation of Virgil is said to have brought him twelve hundred pounds.

Dryden's finest lyric is his Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, generally known as Alexander's Feast. Though much criticised, it still remains a favorite; and deservedly so, as no poem better illustrates the flexibility of the language we speak.

Dryden's old age was not happy. He was poor, and his work was by no means to his taste, for he was compelled to write as a task to earn his daily bread. He was a rapid composer, and seldom pruned or rewrote, and few writers have approached him in the amount of work prepared.

CRITICISM BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THE distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to have been the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate language. This may seem slender praise, yet these were the talents which led Bacon into the recesses of Philosophy and conducted Newton to the cabinet of Nature. The prose works of Dryden bear repeated evidence to his philosophical powers. Indeed, his early and poetical studies gave his researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a consequence of his mental acuteness that his dramatic personages often philosophized or reasoned when they ought only to have felt. The more