scandal of coffee-houses supplied
the greatest want and the greatest luxury of modern times, the
newspaper. There was great scarcity of books in the country places,
and the only press in England north of the Trent seems to have been at
York. Literature was but feebly cultivated by country squires or
country parsons, and female education was disgracefully neglected. Few
rich men had libraries as large or valuable as are now common to
shopkeepers and mechanics; while the literary stores of a lady of the
manor were confined chiefly to the prayer-book and the receipt-book.
And those works which were produced or read were disgraced by
licentious ribaldry, which had succeeded religious austerity. The
drama was the only department of literature which compensated authors,
and this was scandalous in the extreme. We cannot turn over the pages
of one of the popular dramatists of the age without being shocked by
the most culpable indecency. Even Dryden was no exception to the rule;
and his poetry, some of which is the most beautiful in the language,
can hardly be put into the hands of the young without danger of
corrupting them. Poets and all literary men lived by the bounty of the
rich and great, and prospered only as they pandered to depraved
passions. Many, of great intellectual excellence, died from want and
mortification; so that the poverty and distress of literary men became
proverbial, and all worldly-wise people shunned contact with them as
expensive and degrading. They were hunted from cocklofts to cellars by
the minions of the law, and the foulest jails were often their only
resting-place. The restoration of Charles proved unfortunate to one
great and immortal genius, whom no temptations could assail, and no
rewards could bribe. He "possessed his soul in patience," and "soared
above the Aonian mount," amid general levity and profligacy. Had he
written for a pure, classic, and learned age, he could not have
written with greater moral beauty. But he lived when no moral
excellence was appreciated, and his claims on the gratitude of the
world are beyond all estimation, when we remember that he wrote with
the full consciousness, like the great Bacon, that his works would
only be valued or read by future generations. Milton was, indeed,
unmolested; but he was sadly neglected in his blindness and in his
greatness. But, like all the great teachers of the world, he was
sustained by something higher than earthly applause, and labor