such bustling times, it was
absolutely necessary to speak and write to the purpose. The absurdities
of Puritanism had, perhaps, done more. At the time when that odious
style, which deforms the writings of Hall and of Lord Bacon, was almost
universal, had appeared that stupendous work, the English Bible,--a book
which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone
suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power. The respect
which the translators felt for the original prevented them from adding
any of the hideous decorations then in fashion. The groundwork of the
version, indeed, was of an earlier age. The familiarity with which the
Puritans, on almost every occasion, used the Scriptural phrases was no
doubt very ridiculous; but it produced good effects. It was a cant; but
it drove out a cant far more offensive.

The highest kind of poetry is, in a great measure, independent of those
circumstances which regulate the style of composition in prose. But with
that inferior species of poetry which succeeds to it the case is widely
different. In a few years, the good sense and good taste which had
weeded out affectation from moral and political treatises would, in the
natural course of things, have effected a similar reform in the sonnet
and the ode. The rigour of the victorious sectaries had relaxed.
A dominant religion is never ascetic. The Government connived at
theatrical representations. The influence of Shakspeare was once more
felt. But darker days were approaching. A foreign yoke was to be imposed
on our literature. Charles, surrounded by the companions of his long
exile, returned to govern a nation which ought never to have cast him
out or never to have received him back. Every year which he had passed
among strangers had rendered him more unfit to rule his countrymen.
In France he had seen the refractory magistracy humbled, and royal
prerogative, though exercised by a foreign priest in the name of
a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle naturally
gratified a prince to whose family the opposition of Parliaments had
been so fatal. Politeness was his solitary good quality. The insults
which he had suffered in Scotland had taught him to prize it. The
effeminacy and apathy of his disposition fitted him to excel in it. The
elegance and vivacity of the French manners fascinated him. With the
political maxims and the social habits of his favourite people, he
adopted their taste in com