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CHAPTER 4. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PROSE AND POETRY (1603-1660)
The first half of the seventeenth century as a whole, compared with the Elizabethan age, was a period of relaxing vigor. The Renaissance enthusiasm had spent itself, and in place of the danger and glory which had long united the nation there followed increasing dissension in religion and politics and uncertainty as to the future of England and, indeed, as to the whole purpose of life. Through increased experience men were certainly wiser and more sophisticated than before, but they were also more self-conscious and sadder or more pensive. The output of literature did not diminish, but it spread itself over wider fields. Nevertheless, this period includes in prose one writer greater than any prose writer of the previous century, namely Francis Bacon, and, further, the book which unquestionably occupies the highest place in English literature, that is the King James version of the Bible; and in poetry it includes one of the very greatest figures, John Milton.
FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626). Bacon’s splendid mind and unique intellectual vision produced only fragmentary concrete achievements. The only one of his books still commonly read is the series of “Essays”, which consist of brief and comparatively informal jottings on various subjects. In their earliest form, in 1597, the essays were ten in number, but by additions from time to time they had increased at last in 1625 to fifty- eight. They deal with a great variety of topics, whatever Bacon happened to be interested in, from friendship to the arrangement of a house, and in their condensation they are more like bare synopses than complete discussions. But their comprehensiveness of view reveals practical force of Bacon’s thought. The whole general tone of the essays, also, shows the man, keen and worldly, not at all a poet or idealist. How to succeed and make the most of prosperity might be called the pervading theme of the essays.
Bacon’s most important work was not in the field of pure literature but in the general advancement of knowledge, particularly knowledge of natural science. Briefly stated, his purposes were to survey all the learning of his time, in all lines of thought, natural science, morals, politics. This enormous task was to be mapped out and its results summarized in a Latin work called “Magna Instauratio Scientiarum” (The Great Renewal of Knowledge), in which of the great interest is the second part “Novum Organum” (The New Method), written in Latin and published in 1620. Most interesting here, perhaps, is the classification of the
“idols” (phantoms) which mislead the human mind. Of these Bacon finds four sorts: idols of the tribe, which are inherent in human nature; idols of the cave – the errors of the individual; idols of the market-place – due to mistaken reliance on words; and idols of the theater (that is, of the schools), resulting from false reasoning.
In the details of all his scholarly work Bacon’s knowledge and point of view were inevitably imperfect.
Even in natural science he was not altogether abreast of his time – he refused to accept Harvey’s discovery of the manner of the circulation of the blood and the Copernican system of astronomy. Neither was he, as is sometimes supposed, the inventor of the inductive method of observation and reasoning, which in some degree is fundamental in all study. But he did, much more fully and clearly than any one before him, demonstrate the importance and possibilities of that method; and he is fully entitled to the great honor of being called their father, which certainly places him high among the great figures in the history of human thought.
THE KING JAMES BIBLE (1611). It was during the reign of James I that the long series of sixteenth century translations of the Bible reached its culmination in what we have already called the greatest of all English books (or rather, collections of books), the King James (“Authorized”) version. In 1604 an ecclesiastical conference accepted a suggestion, approved by the king, that a new and more accurate rendering of the Bible should be made. The work was entrusted to a body of about fifty scholars, who divided themselves into six groups, among which the various books of the Bible were apportioned. The resulting translation, proceeding with the inevitable slowness, was completed in 1611, and then rather rapidly superseded all other English versions for both public and private use. This King James Bible is universally accepted as the chief masterpiece of English prose style. The translators followed previous versions so far as possible, checking them by comparison with the original Hebrew and Greek, so that while attaining the greater correctness at which they aimed they preserved the accumulated stylistic excellences of three generations of their predecessors; and their language, properly varying according to the nature of the different books, possesses an imaginative grandeur and rhythm. Its style was somewhat archaic from the outset, and of course has become much more so with the passage of time. This entails the practical disadvantage of making the Bible – events, characters, and ideas – seem less real and living; but on the other hand it helps inestimably to create the finer imaginative atmosphere which is so essential for the genuine religious spirit.
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LYRIC POETRY. Apart from the drama and the King James Bible, the most enduring literary achievement of the period was in poetry. And one of the main forces in lyric poetry was the beginning of the revival of the classical spirit. Milton – distinctly, after Shakespeare, the greatest writer of the century – must receive separate consideration here.
JOHN MILTON (1608-1674). Conspicuous above all his contemporaries as the representative poet of Puritanism, and, by almost equally general consent, distinctly the greatest of English poets except Shakespeare, stands John Milton.
Milton was born in London in December, 1608. At sixteen, in 1625, he entered Cambridge, where he remained during the seven years required for the M. A. degree, and where he was known as “the lady of Christ’s”, perhaps for his beauty, of which all his life he continued proud, perhaps for his moral scrupulousness. Milton had planned to enter the ministry, but the growing predominance of the High-Church party made this impossible for him, and on leaving the University in 1632 he retired to the country estate, twenty miles west of London. Here, for nearly six years, amid surroundings which nourished his poet’s love for Nature, he devoted his time chiefly to further mastery of the whole range of approved literature, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English. His poems of these years also are few, but they too are of the very highest quality.
The twenty years which follow developed and modified his nature and ideas in an unusual degree and fashion. Milton abandoned poetry, at least the publication of it, for prose, and for prose which was mostly ephemeral. Milton put forth a series of pamphlets on divorce, arguing, contrary to English law, and with great scandal to the public, that mere incompatibility of temper was adequate ground for separation. His divorce pamphlets had led to the best of his prose writings.
In the remaining fourteen Milton stands out for subsequent ages as a noble figure. The important fact of this last period, however, is that Milton now had the leisure to write, or to complete, “Paradise Lost”. For a quarter of a century he had avowedly cherished the ambition to produce “such a work as the world would not willingly let die” and had had in mind, among others, the story of Man’s Fall. In this purpose he was entirely successful. As a whole, by the consent of all competent judges, “Paradise Lost” is worthy of its theme, perhaps the greatest that the mind of man can conceive, namely “to justify the ways of God”. The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Of course, there are defects. It was early pointed out that in spite of himself Milton has in some sense made Satan the hero of the poem – a reader can scarcely fail to sympathize with the fallen archangel in his unconquerable Puritan-like resistance to Milton’s despotic Deity. Further, Milton’s personal, English, and Puritan prejudices sometimes intrude in various ways. But all these things are on the surface. In sustained imaginative grandeur of conception, expression, and imagery “Paradise Lost”
yields to no human work. The poem could have been written only by one who combined in a very high degree intellectual power, poetic feeling, religious idealism, profound scholarship and knowledge of literature, and also experienced knowledge of the actual world of men.
JOHN BUNYAN. Seventeenth century Puritanism was to find a supreme spokesmen in prose fiction as well as in poetry; John Milton and John Bunyan, standing at widely different angles of experience, make one of the most interesting complementary pairs in all literature.
Bunyan was born in 1628. Several of Bunyan’s books are strong, but none of the others is to be named together with “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. This has been translated into nearly or quite a hundred languages and dialects – a record never approached by any other book of English authorship. The sources of its power are obvious. It is the intensely sincere presentation by a man of tremendous moral energy of what he believed to be the one subject of eternal and incalculable importance to every human being, the subject namely of personal salvation.
This famous story of man's progress through life in search of salvation remains one of the most entertaining allegories of faith ever written. Set against realistic backdrops of town and country, the powerful drama of the pilgrim's trials and temptations follows him in his harrowing journey to the Celestial City.
Along a road filled with monsters and spiritual terrors, Christian confronts such emblematic characters as Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, Talkative, Ignorance, and the demons of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But he is also joined by Hopeful and Faithful.
Its language and style, further, are founded on the noble and simple model of the English Bible, which was almost the only book that Bunyan knew, and with which his whole being was saturated. His triumphant and loving joy in his religion enables him often to attain the poetic beauty and eloquence of his original.
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“Pilgrim’s Progress” is perfectly intelligible to any child, and further, it is highly dramatic and picturesque. It is, to be sure, an allegory, but one of those allegories which seem inherent in the human mind and hence more natural than the most direct narrative.
Suggested report:
Francis Bacon’s essays
John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. The main ideas and plot.
Explain the meaning of literary terms and notions mentioned in the chapter:
jottings a synopsis Puritanism ephemeral deity
ecclesiastical
a pamphlet secular eloquence allegory salvation archaic
