date of the Restoration, because after that time two great
Puritan writers, John Milton and John Bunyan, did some of their most
famous work, the one in retirement, the other in jail. Such work,
uninfluenced by the change of ideal after the Restoration, is properly
treated in this chapter. While a change may in a given year seem
sufficiently pronounced to become the basis for a new classification,
we should remember the literary influences never begin or end with
complete abruptness.

THE PROSE OF THE PURITAN AGE

Variety of Subject.--Prose showed development in several directions
during this Puritan age:--

I. The use of prose in argument and controversy was largely extended.
Questions of government and of religion were the living issues of the
time. Innumerable pamphlets and many larger books were written to
present different views. We may instance as types of this class almost
all the prose writings of John Milton (1608-1674).

II. English prose dealt with a greater variety of philosophical
subjects. Shakespeare had voiced the deepest philosophy in poetry, but
up to this time such subjects had found scant expression in prose.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is the great philosophical writer of the
age. In his greatest work, _Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power
of a Commonwealth_, he considers questions of metaphysical philosophy
and of government in a way that places him on the roll of famous
English philosophers.

III. History had an increasing fascination for prose writers. Sir
Walter Raleigh's _History of the World_ (1614) and Lord Clarendon's
_History of the Great Rebellion_, begun in 1646, are specially worthy
of mention.

IV. Prose was developing its capacity for expressing delicate shades
of humor. In Chaucer and in Shakespeare, poetry had already excelled
in this respect. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an Episcopal clergyman,
displays an almost inexhaustible fund of humor in his _History of the
Worthies of England_. We find scattered through his works passages
like these:--

"A father that whipped his son for swearing, and swore at him while
he whipped him, did more harm by his example than good by his
correction."

[Illustration: THOMAS FULLER.]

Speaking of a pious short person, Fuller says:--

"His soul had but a short diocese to visit, and therefore might the
better attend the effectual informing thereof."

Of the lark, he writes:--

"A harmless bird while living, not trespassin