and work of Bunyan, or appreciate the heroic spirit of the
American colonists who left home for a wilderness in order to give the new
ideal of a free church in a free state its practical demonstration.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. In literature also the Puritan Age was one of
confusion, due to the breaking up of old ideals. Mediaeval standards of
chivalry, the impossible loves and romances of which Spenser furnished the
types, perished no less surely than the ideal of a national church; and in
the absence of any fixed standard of literary criticism there was nothing
to prevent the exaggeration of the "metaphysical" poets, who are the
literary parallels to religious sects like the Anabaptists. Poetry took new
and startling forms in Donne and Herbert, and prose became as somber as
Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. The spiritual gloom which sooner or later
fastens upon all the writers of this age, and which is unjustly attributed
to Puritan influence, is due to the breaking up of accepted standards in
government and religion. No people, from the Greeks to those of our own
day, have suffered the loss of old ideals without causing its writers to
cry, "Ichabod! the glory has departed." That is the unconscious tendency of
literary men in all times, who look backward for their golden age; and it
need not concern the student of literature, who, even in the break-up of
cherished institutions, looks for some foregleams of a better light which
is to break upon the world. This so-called gloomy age produced some minor
poems of exquisite workmanship, and one great master of verse whose work
would glorify any age or people,--John Milton, in whom the indomitable
Puritan spirit finds its noblest expression.

There are three main characteristics in which Puritan literature differs
from that of the preceding age: (1) Elizabethan literature, with all its
diversity, had a marked unity in spirit, resulting from the patriotism of
all classes and their devotion to a queen who, with all her faults, sought
first the nation's welfare. Under the Stuarts all this was changed. The
kings were the open enemies of the people; the country was divided by the
struggle for political and religious liberty; and the literature was as
divided in spirit as were the struggling parties. (2) Elizabethan
literature is generally inspiring; it throbs with youth and hope and
vitality. That which follows speaks of age and sadness; even its brightest
hours are followed by g