FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE***


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      Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work.
           I: From Celt to Tudor
                  see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54168
         III: Queen Anne and the Georges
                  see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37226
          IV: The Later Georges to Victoria
                  see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54143


Transcriber's note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

      A carat character is used to denote superscription. A
      single character following the carat is superscripted
      (example: R^t).





ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

From Elizabeth to Anne


      *      *      *      *      *      *

ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

_By Donald G. Mitchell_

  I. From Celt to Tudor
 II. From Elizabeth to Anne
III. Queen Anne and the Georges

_Each one volume, 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50_

      *      *      *      *      *      *


ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

From Elizabeth to Anne

by

DONALD G. MITCHELL

[Illustration]






New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
MDCCCXCVI

Copyright, 1890, by
Charles Scribner’S Sons

Trow’S
Printing and Bookbinding Company,
New York.




_PREFATORY LETTER._

[TO MRS. J. C. G. PIATT, OF UTICA SCHOOL, N. Y.]


MY DEAR JULIA,--_We have both known, in the past, a certain delightsome
country home; you--in earliest childhood, and I--in latest youth-time: and
I think we both relish those reminders--perhaps a Kodak view, or an autumn
gentian plucked by the road-side, or actual glimpse of its woods, or
brook, on some summer’s drive--which have brought back the old homestead,
with its great stretch of undulating meadow--its elms--its shady
lanes--its singing birds--its leisurely going big-eyed oxen--its long,
tranquil days, when the large heart of June was pulsing in all the leaves
and all the air:_

_Well, even so, and by these light tracings of Lands and Kings, and little
whiffs of metric music, I seek to bring back to you, and to your pupils
and associates (who have so kindly received previous and kindred
reminders) the rich memories of that great current of English letters
setting steadily forward amongst these British lands, and these
sovereigns, from Elizabeth to Anne. But slight as these glimpses are, and
as this synopsis may be, they will together serve, I hope, to fasten
attention where I wish to fasten it, and to quicken appetite for those
fuller and larger studies of English Literature and History, which shall
make even these sketchy outlines valued--as one values little flowerets
plucked from old fields--for bringing again to mind the summers of
youth-time, and a world of summer days, with their birds and abounding
bloom._

                                                   _Affectionately yours,
                                                          D. G. M._

_EDGEWOOD; MARCH, 1890._




_CONTENTS._


                                                   PAGE

                         CHAPTER I.

    PRELIMINARY,                                      1

    THE STUART LINE,                                  4

    JAMES I.,                                         6

    WALTER RALEIGH,                                  11

    NIGEL AND HARRISON,                              19

    A LONDON BRIDE,                                  23

    BEN JONSON AGAIN,                                26

    AN ITALIAN REPORTER,                             29

    SHAKESPEARE AND THE GLOBE,                       32

                         CHAPTER II.

    GOSSON AND OTHER PURITANS,                       42

    KING JAMES’ BIBLE,                               44

    SHAKESPEARE,                                     56

    SHAKESPEARE’S YOUTH,                             61

    FAMILY RELATIONS,                                67

    SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON,                           73

    WORK AND REPUTATION,                             77

    HIS THRIFT AND CLOSING YEARS,                    81

                         CHAPTER III.

    WEBSTER, FORD, AND OTHERS,                       88

    MASSINGER, BEAUMONT, AND FLETCHER,               93

    KING JAMES AND FAMILY,                           99

    A NEW KING AND SOME LITERARY SURVIVORS,         105

    WOTTON AND WALTON,                              109

    GEORGE HERBERT,                                 115

    ROBERT HERRICK,                                 120

    REVOLUTIONARY TIMES,                            126

                         CHAPTER IV.

    KING CHARLES AND HIS FRIENDS,                   132

    JEREMY TAYLOR,                                  135

    A ROYALIST AND A PURITAN,                       140

    COWLEY AND WALLER,                              144

    JOHN MILTON,                                    150

    MILTON’S MARRIAGE,                              157

    THE ROYAL TRAGEDY,                              161

    CHANGE OF KINGS,                                167

    LAST DAYS,                                      174

                         CHAPTER V.

    CHARLES II. AND HIS FRIENDS,                    182

    ANDREW MARVELL,                                 189

    AUTHOR OF HUDIBRAS,                             193

    SAMUEL PEPYS,                                   198

    A SCIENTIST,                                    207

    JOHN BUNYAN,                                    209

                         CHAPTER VI.

    THREE GOOD PROSERS,                             221

    JOHN DRYDEN,                                    227

    THE LONDON OF DRYDEN,                           234

    LATER POEMS AND PURPOSE,                        240

    JOHN LOCKE,                                     248

    END OF THE KING AND OTHERS,                     255

                         CHAPTER VII.

    KINGS CHARLES, JAMES, AND WILLIAM,              261

    SOME LITERARY FELLOWS,                          268

    A PAMPHLETEER,                                  272

    OF QUEEN ANNE,                                  277

    AN IRISH DRAGOON,                               280

    STEELE’S LITERARY QUALITIES,                    285

    JOSEPH ADDISON,                                 288

    SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY,                          291

                         CHAPTER VIII.

    ROYAL GRIEFS AND FRIENDS,                       301

    BUILDERS AND STREETS,                           306

    JOHN GAY,                                       308

    JONATHAN SWIFT,                                 312

    SWIFT’S POLITICS,                               324

    HIS LONDON JOURNAL,                             328

    IN IRELAND AGAIN,                               333




_ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS._




CHAPTER I.


We take outlook to-day from the threshold of the seventeenth century.
Elizabeth is dead (1603), but not England. The powers it had grown to
under her quickening offices are all alive. The great Spanish dragon has
its teeth drawn; Cadiz has been despoiled, and huge galleons, gold-laden,
have come trailing into Devon ports. France is courteously friendly.
Holland and England are in leash, as against the fainter-growing blasts of
Popedom. In Ireland, Tyrone has been whipped into bloody quietude. A
syndicate of London merchants, dealing in pepper and spices, has made the
beginnings of that East-Indian empire which gives to the present British
sovereign her proudest title. London is growing apace in riches and in
houses; though her shipping counts for less than the Dutch shipping, great
cargoes come and go through the Thames--spices from the East, velvets and
glass from the Mediterranean, cloths from the Baltic. Cheapside is
glittering with the great array of goldsmiths’ shops four stories high,
and new painted and new gilded (in 1594) by Sir Richard Martin, Mayor. The
dudes of that time walk and “publish” their silken suits there, and thence
through all the lanes leading to Paul’s Walk--which is, effectively, the
aisle of the great church. There are noblemen who have tall houses in the
city and others who have built along the Strand, with fine grounds
reaching to the river and looking out upon the woods which skirt the
bear-gardens of Bankside in Southwark. The river is all alive with
boats--wherries, barges, skiffs. There are no hackney carriages as yet for
hire; but rich folks here and there rumble along the highways in heavy
Flemish coaches.

Some of the great lights we have seen in the intellectual firmament of
England have set. Burleigh is gone; Hooker is gone, in the prime of his
years; Spenser gone, Marlowe gone, Sidney gone. But enough are left at the
opening of the century and at the advent of James (1603) to keep the great
trail of Elizabethan literary splendors all aglow. George Chapman (of the
Homer) is alive and active; and so are Raleigh, and Francis Bacon, and
Heywood, and Dekker, and Lodge. Shakespeare is at his best, and is acting
in his own plays at the newly built Globe Theatre. Michael Drayton is in
full vigor, plotting and working at the tremendous poem from which we
culled--in advance--a pageful of old English posies. Ben Jonson, too, is
all himself, whom we found a giant and a swaggerer, yet a man of great
learning and capable of the delicious bits of poesy which I cited. You
will further remember how we set right the story of poor Amy Robsart--told
of the great Queen’s vanities--of her visitings--of her days of
illness--and of the death of the last sovereign of the name of Tudor.


_The Stuart Line._

Henceforth, for much time to come, we shall meet--when we encounter
British royalty at all--with men of the house of Stuart. But how comes
about this shifting of the thrones from the family of Tudor to the family
of Stuart? I explained in a recent chapter how the name of Tudor became
connected with the crown, by the marriage of a Welsh knight--Owen
Tudor--with Katharine, widow of Henry V. Now let us trace, if we can, this
name of