The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! 2200 | THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURy The Augustans' effort to popularize and Te high literary x social values was set against the new mass and multipi Te D Writings th, responded more spontaneously to the expanding wneseti ‘possibilities , print. The array of popular prose pes siovo) Da y isguised POlitic,] allegories, biographies of notorious criminals, trave! ogues, gossip, romani, tales—often blended facts and patently fictional elements, cemented by. rich lode of exaggeration, misrepresentations, and outright lies. Out of th, matrix the modern novel would come to be born. The great master of sue works was Daniel Defoe, producing first-person accounts such as Robinson Crusoe (1719), the famous castaway, and Moll Flanders (1722), mistress of lowlife crime. Claims that such works present (as the “editor” of Crus, says) “a just history of fatt,” believed or not, sharpened the public's avidi for them. Defoe shows his readers a world plausibly like the one they know, where ordinary people negotiate familiar, entangled problems of financial, emotional, and spiritual existence. Jane Barker, Mary Davys, and many oth. ers brought women's work and daily lives as well as love affairs to fiction, Such stories were not only amusing but also served as models of conduct; they influenced the stories that real people told about themselves. The theater also began to change its themes and effects to appeal to a wideraudience. The clergyman Jeremy Collier had vehemently taken Dryden, Wycherley, and Congreve to task in A Short View of the Immorality and Pro- faneness of the English Stage (1698), which spoke for the moral outrage of the pious middle classes. The wits retreated. The comedy of manners was replaced by a new kind, later called “sentimental” not only because good «ness triumphs over vice but also because it deals in high moral sentiments rather than witty dialogue and because the embarrassments of its heroines and heroes move the audience not to laughter but to tears. Virtue refuses to bow to aristocratic codes. In one crucial scene of Steele's influential play The Conscious Lovers (1722) the hero would rather accept dishonor than fight è duel with a friend. Piety and middle-class values typify tragedies such as George Lillo's London Merchant (1731). One luxury invented in eighteenth- century Europe was the delicious pleasure of weeping, and comedies as well as tragedies brought that pleasure to playgoers through many decades. Some plays resisted the tide. Gay's cynical Beggar' Opera (1728) was a tremendous success, and later in the century the comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan proved that sentiment is not necessarily an enemy to wit and laughter. Yet larger and larger audiences responded more to spectacles and special effects than to sophisticated writing. Although the stage prospered during the eigh- teenth century, and the star system produced idolized actors and actress ca as David Garrick and Sarah Siddons), the authors of drama tended !° le to the background. ETTI impulses of much the period's writing, readers = #5 en — n more meditative works. Since the seventeenth ii gii: whichinvi more popular than those about the pleasures of retil' daga ited the reader to dream about a safe retreat in the coun!”) or to meditate, like Finch, on scenery and the soul. But after 1726, he" Thomson published Winter, the first of Tea n dae th =” mn cei petri of natural description came into n ti an Sacile Peque beauty found expressii > Its'own. A taste for gentle, picturesa®”. 7 pression not only in verse but in the elaborate, cultivated 0" INTRODUCTION | 2201 ‘of landscape gardening, and finally in the cherished English art of landscape painting in watercolor or oils (often illustrating Thomson's Seasons). Many SI waters, wild prospects, and mountains shrouded in mist. $ pete i ee n Tr THE EMERGENCE OF NEW LITERARY THEMES AND MODES, 1740-85 When Matthew Arnold called the eighteenth century an “age of prose,” he meant to belittle its poetry, but he also stated a significant fact: great prose does dominate the age. Until the 17405, poetry tended to set the standards of literature. But the growth of new kinds of prose took the initiative away from verse. Novelists became better known than poets. Intellectual prose also flourished, with the achievements of Johnson in the essay and literary criticism, of Boswell in biography, of Hume in philosophy, of Burke in poli- tics, of Edward Gibbon in history, of Sir Joshua Reynolds in aesthetics, of Gilbert White in natural history, and of Adam Smith in economics. Each of these authors is a master stylist, whose effort to express himself clearly and fully demands an art as carefully wrought as poetry. Other writers of prose were more informal. The memoirs of such women as Laetitia Pilkington, Charlotte Charke, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Frances Burney bring each reader into their private lives and also remind us that the new print culture created celebrities, who wrote not only about themselves but about other celebrities they knew. The interest of readers in Samuel Johnson helped sell his own books as well as a host of books that quoted his sayings. But the prose of the age also had to do justice to difficult and complicated ideas. An unprecedented effort to formulate the first principles of philosophy, history, psychology, and art required a new style of persuasion. Johnson helped codify that language, not only with his writings but with the first great English Dictionary (1755). This work established him as a national man of letters; eventually the period would be known as “the Age of Johnson.” But his dominance was based on an ideal of service to others. The Dictionary illustrates its definitions with more than 114,000 quotations from the best English writers, thus building a bridge from past to present usage; and Johnson's essays, poems, and criticism also reflect his desire to preserve the lessons of the past. Yet he looks to the future as well, trying both to reach ‘and to mold a nation of readers. If Johnson speaks for his age, one reason is his faith in common sense and the common reader. “By the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices,” he wrote in the last of his Lives of the Poets (1781), “must be finally decided all claim to poetical honors.” A similar respect for the good judgment of ordinary people, and for standards 2204 | THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Godwin, eventually composed a romantic nightmare, Frankenstein (1818) that continues to haunt our dreams. D | arkable experiments in fiction, antic The century abounded in other rem > in ipating many of the forms that novelists still use today. Tobias Smolletty picaresque Roderick Random (1748) and Humphry Clinker (1771) delight in coarse practical jokes, the freaks and strong odors of life. But the MOSt novel novelist of the age was Laurence Sterne, a humorous, sentimental clergy. man who loves to play tricks on his readers. The Life and Opinions of Tris. tram. Shandy (1760-67) abandons clock time for psychological time, whimsically follows chance associations, interrupts its own stories, violates the conventions of print by putting chapters 18 and 19 after chapter 25, sneaks in double entendres, and seems ready to go on forever. And yet these games get us inside the characters’ minds, as if the world were as capricious as our thoughts. Sterne self.conscious art implies that people's private help create reality itself. As unique as obsessions shape their lives—or Sterne's fictional world is, his interest in private life matched the concerns of the novel toward the end of the century: depictions of characters’ intimate feelings dominated the tradition of domestic fiction that included Burney, Radcliffe, and, later, Maria Edgeworth, culminating in the masterworks of Jane Austen. A more “masculine” orientation emerged at the beginning of the next century, as Walter Scott's works, with their broad historical scope and outdoor scenes of men at work and war, appealed to a large readership. Yet the copious, acute, often ironic attention to details of private life by Rich- ardson, Sterne, and Austen continued to influence the novel profoundly through its subsequent history. CONTINUITY AND REVOLUTION The history of eighteenth-century literature was first composed by the Romantics, who wrote it to serve their own interests. Prizing originality, they naturally preferred to stress how different they were from writers of er historians have tended to follow their lead, compet- the previous age. Lat olu- ing to prove that everything changed in 1776, or 1789, or 1798. This revi tionary view of history accounts for what happened to the word revolution. The older meaning referred to a movement around a point, a recurrence or cycle, as in the revolutions of the planets; the newer meaning signified a violent break with the past, an overthrow of the existing order, as in the Big Bang or the French Revolution. Romantic rhetoric made heavy use of such dramatic upheavals. Yet every history devoted to truth must take account © both sorts of revolution, of continuities as well as changes. The ideals that many Romantics made their own—the passion for liberty and equality, the founding of justice on individual rights, the distrust of institutions, the Jove of nature, the reverence for imagination, and even the embrace of chang®T grew from seeds that had been planted long before. Nor did Augustan litera” ture abruptly vanish on that day in 1798 when Wordsworth and Coleridge annali published a small and unsuccessful volume of poems calle SRL Fan when they rebel against the work of Pope and Johns®" Yo antic writers incorporate much of their language and values. INTRODUCTION | 2205 What Restoration and eighteenth-century literature passed on to the future, in fact, was chiefly a set of unresolved problems. The age of Enlight- enment was also, in England, an age that insisted on holding fast to older beliefs and customs; the age of population explosion was also an age of indi- vidualism; the age that developed:the slave trade was also the age that gave rise to the abolitionist movement; the age that codified rigid standards of conduct for women was also af age when many women took the chance to read and write and think for themselves; the age of reason was also the age when sensibility flourished; the last classical age was also the first modern age. These contradictions aré far from abstract; writers were forced to choose their own directions. When young James Boswell looked for a mentor whose biography he might write, he considered not only Samuel Johnson but also David Hume, whose skeptical'views of morality, truth, and religion were everything Johnson abhorred. The two writers seem to inhabit different worlds, yet Boswell traveled freèly between them. That was exciting and also instructive. “Without Contraries is no progression,” according to one citizen of Johnson's London, William Blake, who also thought that “Opposition is true Friendship.” Good conversation was a lively eighteenth-century art, and sharp disagreements did not ‘keep people from talking. The conversations the period started have not ended yet. The Restoration and The Fighteenth Century ‘16607 Samuel Pepys begins his diary 1662” Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1 1667: John Milton, Paradise Lost 1668: John Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy 1678, John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress part 1 1681” Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel 1687» Sir Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica 1688 Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, 1690 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1700 »William Congreve, The Way of the _ World. Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage — 1704» Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub. Newton, Opticks 1711 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism. Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, Spectator (1711-12, 1714) #1716 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes her letters from Turkey (1716-18) 1717? Pope, The Rape of the Lock (final version) 1660 Charles II restored to the n Reopening of the theaters 1662) Act of Uniformity requires all clergy to obey the Church of England. Chartering of the Royal Society 1664-66 Great Plague of London 1666, Fire destroys the City.of London, 16689 Dryden becomes poet laureate Test Act requires all officcholders r allegiance to Anglicanism 1673) to sw 1678) The “Popish, Plot” inflames anti- Catholic feeling 1681 #Charles 16850 Death of Charles Il I. James II, his Catholic brother, takes the throne — issolves Parliament (1688-89) The Glorious Revolution. James II exiled and succeeded by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange 11702 Waroof the Spanish Succession begins, Death of William III. Succession of Anne (Protestant daughter of James I) 1707. Act of Union with Scotland 1710,, Tories take power 1713, Treaty of Utrecht ends War of the Spanish Succession 11714° Death of Queen Anne. George I (great-grandson of James 1) becomes the first Hanoverian king. Tory government > replaced by Whigs 2206 JOHN DRYDEN | 2209 Between 1678 and 1681, when he was nearing fifty, Dryden discovered his great gift for writing formal verse satire. A quarrel with the playwright Thomas Shadwell prompted the mock-heroie episode “Mac Flecknoe,” probably written in 1678 or 1679 but not published until 1682. Out of the stre: ioned by the Popish Plot (1678) and its political aftermath came his major political satires, Absalom and Achit- ophel (1681), and “The Medal” (1682), his final attack on the villain of Absalom and Achitophel, the earl of Shaftesbury. Twenty years’ experience as poet and playwright had prepared him technically for the triumph of Absalom and Achitophel. He had mastered the heroic couplet, having fashioned it into an instrument suitable in his hands for every sort of discourse from the thrust and parry of quick logical argument, to lyric feeling, rapid narrative, or forensic declamation. Thanks to this long di pline, he was able in one stride to rival the masters of verse satire: Horace, Juvenal, Persius, în ancient Rome, and Boileau, his French contemporary. The consideration of religious and political questions that the events of 1678-81 forced on Dryden brought a new seriousness to his mind and works. In 1682 he pub- lished Religio Laici, a poem in which he examined the grounds of his religious faith and defended the middle way of the Anglican Church against the rationalism of Deism on the one hand and the authoritarianism of Rome on the other. But he had moved closer to Rome than he perhaps realized when he wrote the poem. Charles Il died in 1685 and was succeeded by his Catholic brother, James Il. Within a year Dryden and his two sons converted to Catholicism. Though his enemies accused him of opportunism, he proved his sincerity by his steadfast loyalty to the Roman Church after James abdicated and the Protestant William and Mary came in; as a result he was to lose his offices and their much-needed stipends. From his new posi- tion as a Roman Catholic, Dryden wrote in 1687 The Hind and the Panther, in which a milk-white Hind (the Roman Church) and a spotted Panther (the Anglican Church) eloquently debate theology. The Hind has the better of the argument, but Dryden already knew that James” policies were failing, and with them the Catholic cause in England. Dryden was now nearing sixty, with a family to support on a much-diminished income. To earn a living, he resumed writing plays and turned to translations. In 1693 appeared his versions of Juvenal and Persius, with a long dedicatory epistle on satire; and in 1697, his greatest achievement in this mode, the works of Virgil. At the very end, two months before his death, came the Fables Ancient and Modern, prefaced by one of the finest of his critical nd made up of translations from Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Dryden's foremost achievement was to bring the pleasures of literature to the ever- increasing reading public of Britain. As a critic and translator, he made many clas- sies available to men and women who lacked a classical education. His canons of taste and theoretical principles would set the standard for the next generation. As a writer of prose, he helped establish a popular new style, shaped to the cadences of good conversation. Johnson praised its apparent artlessness: “every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous . . . though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh.* Although Dryden's plays went out of fashion, his poems did not. His satire inspired the most brilliant verse satirist of the next century, Alexander Pope, and the energy and variety of his metrics launched the long-standing vogue of heroic couplets. Augustan style is at its best in his poems: lively, dignified, precise, and always musical—a flexible instrument of public speech. “By him we were taught sapere et fari, to think naturally and express forcibly,” John- son concluded. “What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by Dryden, lateritiam invenit, mar- moream reliquit, he found it brick, and he left it marble.” 2212 | JOHN DRYDEN Song from Marriage à la Mode 1 RIA i) Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each DE I When passion is decayed? i We loved gui we loved, as long as i Till our love was loved out in us : a l Bitto marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled "Twas pleasure first made it an oath. 2 If I have pleasures for a friend, ° lo And farther love in store, E What wrong has he whose joys did end, who could give no more? n toi he should be jealous of me, Or that I should bat him of another: Ia i 1s_Forall we can gain is to give ourselves pain, When neither can hinder the other. uu dito | lue drettto 73 ca. 1672 x 167 Absalom and Achitophel In 1678 a dangerous crisis, both religious and political, threatened to undo the Restoration settlement and to precipitate England once again into civil war. The Popish Plot and its aftermath not only whipped up extreme anti-Catholic passions, but led between 1679 and 1681 to a bitter political struggle between Charles IT (hose adherents came to be called Tories) and the earl of Shaftesbury (whose followers were termed Whigs). The issues were nothing less than the Prerogatives of the crown and the possible exclusion of the kings Catholic brother, James, duke of York, from his Position as heir-presumptive to the throne. Charles's cool Courage and brilliant, if Unscrupulous, political genius saved the throne for his brother and gave at least temporary peace to his people. Charles was a Catholic at heart—he received the last rites of that church on his deathbed—and Was eager to do what he could do discreetly for the relief of Ta ebrea w po fn severe civil and religious disabilities imposed because Charles had no legitiio I by, for he was next în line of succession as that of Charles neglectel Île in Ta her 7a pousehold dana) center of Catholic life and HE He at si erine of Braganza, inevitably became the dice and suspicion, Rus;at court and Consequently of Protestant preju- _ No one understood, however, that the Titus Oates (a renegade Catholic timony of the existence of a Je sacre Protestants, and rece: he country might h, Rca Situation w. convert of in Suit plot to ass stablish the Ron ave kent ite La t as explosive until 1678, when famous character) offe nate the king, Nan Church, red sworn tes- burn London, mas- 2254 | JOHN DRYDEN though it may be admired by s0' know that wit is best conveyed t0 US be admired when a great ‘ received that it is understood is the most easily di making a face at it, times a hard nut to bre there is this difference gives us deep thoughts i other gives us common | his wit is independent of his wor' Had Cain been Scot, G Not forced him wander, as if every ak our teet betwixt hi “Gi sic omnia dixisset! Thi never to be lost or killed: and s For beauty, like And yet the silent hy You see tha that it does not shock us as we [SHAKESPEARE AND BEN J “To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was ts; had the largest and m JI th present to him, and he drew them} not labori- nything, you more than see it, you feel wanted learning, give him the greater learned; he needed not the spectacles of d'inwards, and found her therè. I cannot say perhaps ancient poe images of Nature were still ously, but'lùckily; when he describes ai it.to0. Those who accuse him to have commendation: he was naturally books to read Nature; he looke he is everywhere alike; were he so, I sho with the greatest of, mankind. He is many time: me few pedants, W in the most easy language; and is most, hought comes 0 by the m gested: but we can ( word were a pill h, without a s satires and n common language, gl truse words: ’tis true in some places eanest ap) not read a n thoughts in abs ds, as in od would have changed his doom; but confined him home.? sis wit i o that other white powder, pocrite destroys.* t the last line is highly metapho! read it.” ill not pass upon those w}, o dressed in words so common|y prehensions, as the best in verse of Cleveland's without to swallow: he gives us many kernel for our pains. So tha Doctor Donne's; that the one though rough cadence; the that of the Rebel Scot: n all languages: it is like mercury, makes no noise, rical, but it is so soft and gentle ONSON COMPAREDÌ® the man who of all modern, and lost comprehensive soul. All the. uld do him injury to compare him flat, insipid; his comic uit ES Rata La È Pie Si degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to himyno man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi® The consideration of this made Mr. Hales” of Eton say that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with 2. Lines 63-64. 3. Had he said everything thus! (Latin; Juvenal' SAUNE 10112822405 10 eat a 4. From Rupertismus, lines 39-40. i Rup , lines 39-40. Mercury i said to be “killed” if its fluidity is destroyed. Da 5. Neander's contrast of Shakespeare and Jon- son introduces an extended commentary on the latter's play Epicoene; or the Silent Woman. 6. As do cypresses among the bending shrubs (Latin; Virgil's Eclogues 1.25). 7. The learned John Hales (1584-1656), provost of Eton. He is reputed to have said this to Jonson himself, THE PREFACE TO FABLES ANCIENT AND MODERN | 2259 numbers of Lydgate and Gower,5 his contemporaries; there is the rude sweet- ness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. "Tis true I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him;° for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine; but this opinion is not worth con- futing; 'tis so gross and obvious an error that common sense (which is a rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse which we call heroic” was either not known, or nof always practiced in Chaucer's age. It were an èasy matter to produce some thousands of his verses which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. We can only say that he lived'in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first, * * * He must have.been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, ‘because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken.into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various. manners and humors (as we now call them) of'the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. AII his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations but in their very physiognomies and per- sons. Baptista Porta* could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their talés, and OF their telling, are so suited t0 their different educations, humors, and call- .ings that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is differ- ent: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cookare several? men, and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress and the broad- speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this; there is such a variety of game springing up before me that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. "Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. * * * 1700 5. John Gower (d. 1408), poet and friend of Chau- readers knew how to pronounce Middle English, » “Numbers”: versification. John Lydgate (ca. . 1449) wrote poetry that shows the influ- nce of Chaucer. 6. Thomas Speght's Chaucer, which Dryden used, was first published in 1598; the second edi- tion, published in 1602, was reprinted in 1687. 7. The pentameter line. In Dryden's time few especially the syllabic e. Moreover, Chaucer's works were known only in corrupt printed texts. As a consequence Chaucer's verse seemed rough and irregular. 8. Giambattista della Porta (ca. 1535-1615), author of a Latin treatise on physiognomy. 9. Different. : SAMUEL PEPYS 1633-1703 le som ofa London tailor. With the help amuel Pepys (pronounced “Peeps”) was th dge; with the help of a cousin he found «of a scholarship he took a degree at Cambri a place in the Navy Office. Eventually, through hard work and an eye for detail, he rose to secretary of the Admiralty. His defense of the Navy Office and himself before Parliament in 1668 won him a reputation as a good administrator, and his career con- tinued to prosper until it was broken, first by false accusations of treason in 1679 and finally by the fall of James II in 1688. But Pepys was more than a bureaucrat. A Lon- doner to his core, he was interested in all the activities of the city: the theater) music, ‘and the scientific experiments of the the social whirl, business, religion, literary life, Royal Society (which he served as president from 1684 to 1686). He also found plenty of chances to indulge his two obsessions: chasing after women and making money. Pepys kept his diary from 1660 to 1669 (when his eyesight began to fail). Writing in shorthand and sometimes in: code, he was utterly frank in recording the events of his day, both public and private, the major affairs of state or his quarrels with his wife. Altogether he wrote about 1.3 million words. When the diary was first deci- phered and published in the nineteenth century, it made him newly famous» As a document of social history it is unsurpassed for its rich detail, honesty, and imme- diacy. But more than that, it gives us a sense of somebody else’s world: what ît was like to live in the Restoration, and what it was like to see through the eyes of Pepys. From The Diary. [rHE GREAT FIRE] September 2, 1666 Lords day. Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today, Jane called us up, about 3 in the morning, to tell us of, a great fire they saw in the City.' So I rose, and slipped on iny nighigown and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back side of Mark Lane? at the furthest; but being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off, and so went to bed again and to sleep. About 7 rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off. So to my closet? to set things to rights after yesterday s cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw, and that it was now burning down'all Fish Street by London Bridge. So I made myself ready pres ently,* and walked to the Tower and there got up upon one of the high places, 1. The fire of London, which was to d 7 la , lestroy four- Nea x i È x fifths of the central city, had begun an hour car- 2) pda house in Seething Lane. lier. For another description see Dryden's Annus 4.1 | private room or study. Mirabilis (p. 2210). . Immediately. 2240 THE DIARY | 2261 Sir. Robinson” little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge—which, among other people, did trouble me for poor little Michell and our Sarah? on the Bridge. So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's baker's- house in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burned down St:Magnus' Churchand most part of Fish Street already. So I down to the waterside and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lam- entable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steelyard while I was there. Everybody endeavoring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters” that lay off. Poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stair by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons I perceive were loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balco- nies till they were some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. Having stayed, and in an hour' time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody to my sight endeavoring to que hit But to remove their goods and leave all to the fire; and having seen it get as far as the Steelyard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the city, and everything, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things, the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs. * lives, and whereof my old school-fellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top and there burned till it fell down—I to Whitehall® with a gentleman with me who desired to go off from the Tower to see the fire in my boat—to Whitehall, and there up to the King's closet in the chapel, where people came about me and I did give them an account dismayed them all; and word was carried in to the King, so I was called for and did tell the King and Duke of York what I saw, and that unless his Majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses but to pull down before the fire every way. The Duke of York bid me tell him that if he would have any more soldiers, he shall; and so did my Lord Arling- ton afterward, as a great secret. Here meeting with Captain Cocke, I in his coach, which he lent me, and Creed with me, to Paul's; and there walked along Watling Street as well as I could, every creature coming away loaden with goods to save—and here and there sick people carried away in beds. Extraordinary good goods carried in carts and on backs. At last met my Lord Mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent, with a hankercher? about his neck. To the King's message, he cried like a fainting woman, “Lord, what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses. But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.” That he needed no more soldiers; and that for himself, he must go and refresh himself, having been up 5. William Michell and his wife, Betty, one of 8. Mrs. Horsely, a beauty admired and pursued ‘ old flames, lived near London Bridge. by Pepys. ad been a maid of the Pepyses'. 9, Pi entral London. ‘avern in Thames Street, near the source of 1. St. Paul's Cathedral, later ravaged by the fire. 2. Handkerchief. the fire. 7. Barges. % 2270 | JOHN BUNYAN The Pilgrim' Progress is the most popular allegory in English. Its basic metaphòr— Je and familiar: the objects that the:pilgrim Christian meets are homely and commonplace: a quagmire, the highway, reni ron i steep hi e ‘air on market day, a through pleasant meadows, the inn, the steep hill, the town e doo! i i ally Jy parables of Jes the river that must be forded. As in the equally home!y i îri igni ‘e. Moreover, thi a tal i i harged with spiritual significance. More ris: È Vaie Pn) sim Js is the Kings Highway, it is also a» id that Christian trave v blinis, and , perilous path along whie obgoblins, and the ter x 1 hi h we encounter giants, wild beasts, hr rible Apollyon, “the angel of the bottomless pit;” whom Christian must fight. Bunyan keeps the tale firmly base don human experience» and his style, modeled on the prose of the English Bib lex together with his concrete language and carefully observed details enables even the simplest reader to share the experiences of the characters»What could be better than th e following sentence? “Some cry out against sin even as the mother cries out against her child in her lap, when she calleth it slut and naughty girl, and then falls to hugging and kissing it. Dir rara no longer a household book, but it survives.in the:phrases.it gave to our language: “Mr. Worldly-Wisemany ‘and “Vanity “the slough of despond, "the house beautiful” ; Fair" And.it lives again for anyone whoreads beyond the first page. 5 life isa journey—is simp! From The Pilgrim's Progress From This World to That Which Is to Come: Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream “ ì > © ® . [CHRISTIAN SETS OUT FOR THE CELESTIAL CITY] As 1 walked through the wilderness of this world, T lighted'on a certain place dén, and I laid me down in that,place to sleep; and, as I slept, I. where was a d > dreamed a dream. Ldreamed, and behold I saw a-man clothed with ràgs,” standing in a certain place; with his face from his own house, a book in his hand,rand a great birden'upon his back (Isaiah lxiv.6; Luke xiv.33; Psalms xxxvii Habakkuk ii.2; Acts xvi.31). I looked and saw him open the book ‘and read therein; and, as he read, he%ve d; and not being able longer to contain, he Brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?” (Acts i.37).. ci La In this plight, therefore, he went home and refra ingd himself as long as he could, that his wife and children should not perceive his distress; but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble increased. Wherefore at length he biake his mind to his wife and children; and thus he began to talk to them. O my dear wife, said he, and you the children of my bowels, your — re et ea eran 3 ) is ourci i vi fire from heaven, in which fearful Swtrthrow both svn Ces ate pad ua sweet babesy shall miserably come to ruin, except (the which si e iaia ne: had said to them was true, but Foa t chat they believed tipi wie sd temper! had got into his en E È Re thought that some frenzy dis: 5 re, it drawing towards night, and they 1. A malady causing madness. The use of frenz aniadiectivenva liective was not uncommon in the 17th century. THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS | 2271 hoping that sleep might settle his brains, with all a, got him to bed; but the night was as ttoublesòme to him as the day; wherefore, instead of sleeping, he spent it in sigh and tears. So when the morning was come, they would know how he did. He told them, Worse and worse; he also set to talk- ing to them again, but they began to be H&fderted. They also thought to drive away his distemper by hash and Sùrly carmages” to him: sometimes they would deride, sometimes they would chidé,‘and sometimes they would quite ‘Heglect him. Wherefore he began to retire himself to his chamber, to pray for and pity themyand also to condolé his own misery; he would. also walk soli- tarily in the fields, sometimes reading; and sometimes praying; and thus for _ ‘some days he spent his time. Now L.saw. upon a time, when he was walking.in the fields, that he was (as he was wont) Teading.in this book, and greatly distressed in his mind; and as he read, he burst oùt\'as he had done before, crying, “What shall I do to be saved?” } a 1 saw also that he looked this way and that way, as if he would run; yet he stood still, because (as I perceived) he could not tell which way to go. 1 _ looked then, and saw.ayman named Evangelist* coming to him, who asked, =? © * Wherefore dost thou cry? (Job xxxiii.23). He answered, Sir, I perceive by the è book in my hand that lam condemned to diè, and after that:to come‘tojudg- © ment (Hebrews ix.27), and I-find that I am not willing to do the first (Job xvi.21), nor able to do the.second (Ezekiel xxii.14). % Then said Evangelist, Why not willing to die; since-this:lifeis attendede with so many evilsè The man answered, Because l fear that this burden. that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave; and. I shall. fall. into Tophet®(Isaiah xxx.33). And; sir, if I'be not fit to go to prison; l am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the thoughts of these things make me:eryi? Then said Evangelist, If this be thy condition; why standest thou still? He © answered, Because lknow not whither:to:go: Then he gave him a parchment roll, and there was written within, “Fly from:the.wrath to come?(Matthew far di iii.7). The man therefore read it, and looking upon Evangelist very carefully, said, Whither must I fly? Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a very wide field, Do you see yonder wicketgate?” (Matthew vii. 13, 14.) The man said, No. Then said the other, Do you see Yonder shining light? (Psalms cxix.105; II Peter i.19.) He said, think do: Then said Evangelist, Keeprthate light in your eye, and go up directly thereto; so shalt thou see the gate; at » which when thou knockest it shall be told thee what thou shalt do. So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now, he had not run far from his own door, but his wife and children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears, and Tad dn erying, Life! life! eternal life! (Luke xiv.26.) So he looked not behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain (Genesis xix.17). * 2. Behavior. for hell. 3, A preacher of the Gospel; literally, a bearer of —5. Cry out good news. 6. Sorrowfully. 4. The place near Jerusalem where bodies and 7. A small gate in or beside a larger gate filth were burned; hence, by association, a name 2272 | JOHN BUNYAN ut to see him run (Jeremiah xx.10); and as he eatened, and some cried after him to return; there were two that resolved to fetch him back ‘as Obstinate, and the name of the other Pli. a good distance from them; but, The neighbors also came o! ran some mòcked, others thr ‘and, among those that did so, by force. The name of the one w able. Now by this time the man was got Ù did. and i ° however, they were resolved to pursue him, which they did, and in a little time they overtook him. Then said the man, Neighbors, Wherefore are ye come? They said, To persuade you to go back with us. But he said, That can by no means be; you dwell; said he, in.the City of Destruction (the place also where I was born)'seesit:to.be:so; andydying there, sooner or later, you will sink lower than the grave, into a place that burnswith fire and brimstone; be content, good neighbors, and go along with me oss: What! said Obstinate, and leave our friends and our comforts behind us? cur»Yes, said Christian (for that was his name), because that ALL which vou shall forsake is not worthy to be compared with a little of that which I am seeking to enjoy (II Corinthians v.17); and, if you will go along with me, and hold it, you shall fare as I myself; for there, where I go, is enough and to ‘spàrè (Luke xv.17). Come away, and prove my words. — o8sT What are the things you Seèk, since you leave all the world to find them? cur: I seck an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away (I Peter 1.4), and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there (Hebrews xi.16), to be bestowed, at the time appointed, on them that diligently seek it. Read it.so, if you will, in my book. OBST: Tush! said Obstinate, away with your book; will you go back'with us orno? |“ x avakie cur. No, not I, said the other, because I have laid my hand to the plow. (Luke ix.62). Îi ogsT. Come, then, neighbor Pliable, let us turn again, and go home with- out him; there is a company of these crazed-headed cotcombs, that, when they take a fancy* by the end, are wiser in their own eyes than seven men that can render a reason (Proverbs xxvi:16). n pLIeThen said Pliable, Dont revile; if what the good Christian says is true, the things he looks after are better than ours; my heart inclines to go with my neighbor. » OBST. What! more fools still? Be ruled by me, go back; who knows whither such a brain-sick fellow will lead you? Go back, go back, and be wise. cHR: Nay, but do thou come with thy neighbor, Pliable; there are such di to be had which I spoke of, and many more glories besides. If you tnt ue ie dock nile ui fat cp ix.17-22; xiîi.20), y the blood of Him that made it (Hebrews dn said Pliable, I begin to come to a point,” I i is good man, and to cast i lot wi Sino y goodicompanion, do JN Enar aa > cast in my lot with him: but, my y way to this desired place? 8. Delusion. “Coxcombs”: fools. 9. D . Decision.