The teacher who seeks to impose his views raises antagonists,
and not disciples. The generation of young men who grew up under the
Commonwealth were in intellectual revolt against the constraint of
Puritanism, before they proceeded to political revolution against its
authority. Long before the reaction embodied itself in the political
fact of the Restoration, it had manifested itself in popular
literature. The theatres were still closed by the police, but Davenant
found a public in London to applaud an "entertainment by declamations
and music, after the manner of the ancients" (1656). The press began
timidly to venture on books of amusement, in a style of humour which
seemed ribald and heathenish to the staid and sober covenanter.
Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed
to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying
with the innocence of love," as in _England's Helicon_ (1600), or
_The Passionate Pilgrim_, the sentiment, crushed and maimed by unwise
repression, found a less honest and less refined expression. The
strongest and most universal of human passions when allowed freedom,
light, and air, becomes poetic inspiration.
Pages:
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199