house in 1688. used to live. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, where Milton 17. A third preacher and writer who suffered persecution for his faith was RICHARD BAXTER. He was a delicate boy, but began early to study for the Church. He was ordained, and preached in the villages near Dudley, where he kept a school. For sixteen years he preached to the people of Kidderminster,1 as their vicar was ill; but he still begged that the vicar might live on at the vicarage and get the larger portion of the salary. Baxter made a great change in the town of Kidderminster. It had been a very wicked place when he went, but in a few years he had made it quite a decent, orderly town. 18. Cromwell asked Baxter to come and be chaplain to his troop of Ironsides. At first Baxter refused, being inclined toward the king's side; but he afterwards went, and remained as chaplain to the regiment for two years. He tried to get the soldiers to dispute less about religious differences; and later, when he was ill and left alone with a servant in Derbyshire, he wrote a book called The Saints' Everlasting Rest, in which he urged people to think more of living a life of love on earth, and of preparing for the life that is to come, than of disputing about their special opinions. 19. When he recovered, Baxter returned to Kidderminster, and tried to get different religious parties there to unite. He was also called to the great conference of bishops and Puritan preachers after the Restoration, when they tried to settle on one Church for all the English people, and he no doubt was disappointed when nothing came of it. When the Act of Uniformity was passed, Baxter, being a Puritan, had to give up his living at Kidderminster. With his good, brave wife he went to Acton,2 and there he was imprisoned for preaching in his own house to some friends. His wife went with him to prison. In King James the Second's reign he was again imprisoned for eighteen months for writing about the persecution of the Puritans. When William the Third became king, Baxter 1 Dudley and Kidderminster, in WorWor cestershire. 2 Acton, in Middlesex. went to London, and was allowed to live in peace. In his last illness his friends wrote that he was then "almost in heaven," so beautiful was his example of the life of faith. CHAPTER XV. FRENCH FASHIONS IN LITERATURE. 1. You may remember that for a time Italian literature was in great favour in England, and that English poets, such as Chaucer, Surrey, Sidney, and Spenser, studied it and borrowed some of its forms. Now French literature and style came into fashion. During his exile Charles the Second had spent much of his time in France, and he and his courtiers brought a great many French fashions with them into England. The French language was at that time just becoming settled. A number of ladies and gentlemen had formed a society called the Academy, in which they proposed to study elegance of language, making rules of style, and settling what words should be considered pure French. They made a dictionary and a grammar, and the people began to write plays and poems according to rules borrowed from Greek poets and play-writers. 2. You can easily imagine that though the result might be very elegant, and might suit the French taste and character, it would seem unnatural in English to English men and women. Yet it was the fashion set by the court; and Shakespeare and Milton, who had not obeyed such rules, were voted coarse and barbarous. The plays of the Elizabethan dramatists were no longer played in the theatres, and English poetry had to be written in what is called poetic diction-that is, in finely sounding Latinized words, quite different from those that would naturally rise to the lips when one felt deeply. The subjects chosen, too, were artificial; and indeed for a time English literature resembled rather the stiff French style of gardening, 1 The Academy, founded by Cardinal | group of academies united under the name Richelieu in 1637. It now forms one of a of the Institute of France. with formal flower-beds, and the trees clipped into fantastic shapes and figures, than the sweet old English gardens, with all manner of flowers growing in wild profusion. 3. Still, it became the fashion to admire the French style only, and people who knew the rules of French literature, though they could not write a line of good poetry, would set themselves up as critics of poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare, and turn away in disgust when they found they had obeyed no other rules than those of truth and humanity and true genius. Other critics, who were clever, though not very kind, wrote smart mockeries of literature that broke the French rules—satires, such poems were called; and though satire is often very useful, it is hurtful when it is overdone, and used in scorn of what is really good. CHAPTER XVI. JOHN DRYDEN. 1. In the crowd of writers carried away by the new fashion was one really great poet, whom it is sad to see among them. His name was JOHN DRYDEN. He was the son of a Puritan clergyman, and was born in the parsonage of Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire. He went to Westminster School, the headmaster of which, Dr. Busby, was famed for thrashing knowledge into his scholars. Dryden gained a scholarship, which took him to Cambridge. Just after he took his degree his father died, so at once Dryden had to plunge into the world. His first verses were written on Cromwell's death, and are called Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell. Perhaps Dryden had met the great Protector, as the cousin with whom the young poet lived in London was Lord Chamberlain, and a great friend of Cromwell's. It seems rather strange that Dryden's next poem should be one of welcome to Charles the Second on his restoration. 2. With the return of King Charles and his courtiers the theatres were again opened, and there arose a demand for what are called "heroic" plays, since people of fashion pretended that Shakespeare's were too coarse for their French taste. These heroic plays were stories of court life and plots. The characters were kings, queens, and great nobles; and that the scenery and dresses might be as grand as possible, generally an Eastern court was chosen as the scene of the play. Such plays were written in ten-syllabled rhymed verse, called heroic measure. Dryden was eager to make money by his profession, and here seemed an opening: he set about writing heroic plays. His first he wrote with Sir Robert Howard. It was called The Indian Queen, and was a great success. While they were busy with it, the two writers spent some time at Charlton, the home of Sir Robert Howard's father, the Duke of Berkshire, and there Dryden made acquaintance with Elizabeth Howard, his friend's sister, whom he married soon afterwards. 3. For a time the theatres were closed on account of the with formal flower-beds, and the trees clipped into fantastic shapes and figures, than the sweet old English gardens, with all manner of flowers growing in wild profusion. 3. Still, it became the fashion to admire the French style only, and people who knew the rules of French literature, though they could not write a line of good poetry, would set themselves up as critics of poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare, and turn away in disgust when they found they had obeyed no other rules than those of truth and humanity and true genius. Other critics, who were clever, though not very kind, wrote smart mockeries of literature that broke the French rules-satires, such poems were called; and though satire is often very useful, it is hurtful when it is overdone, and used in scorn of what is really good. CHAPTER XVI. JOHN DRYDEN. 1. In the crowd of writers carried away by the new fashion was one really great poet, whom it is sad to see among them. His name was JOHN DRYDEN. He was the son of a Puritan clergyman, and was born in the parsonage of Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire. He went to Westminster School, the headmaster of which, Dr. Busby, was famed for thrashing knowledge into his scholars. Dryden gained a scholarship, which took him to Cambridge. Just after he took his degree his father died, so at once Dryden had to plunge into the world. His first verses were written on Cromwell's death, and are called Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell. Perhaps Dryden had met the great Protector, as the cousin with whom the young poet lived in London was Lord Chamberlain, and a great friend of Cromwell's. It seems rather strange that Dryden's next poem should be one of welcome to Charles the Second on his restoration. 2. With the return of King Charles and his courtiers the |