William Prynne's
interminable series of pamphlets on all sorts of public questions,
and often violently against the Government. For the rest, where were
the Herricks, the Shirleys, the Clevelands, and the other old
Royalist wits and satirists of the lighter sort? Keeping schools,
most of them, or living with friends in the country, and now and then
sending out, as before, some light thing in print. Samuel Butler, a
secretary or the like in private families, was yet unknown to fame,
but was taking notes and sure to print them some day; and the two
most placid and imperturbable men in all England were Browne of
Norwich and Izaak Walton. Browne, all his best known writings
published long ago, but appearing in new editions, was contented now
with attending his patients; and, when Izaak Walton was not in his
house in Clerkenwell (to which neighbourhood he seems to have removed
after giving up his shop in Chancery Lane), he was away on some
fishing ramble. His _Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man's
Recreation_ had appeared in May 1653, and a second edition of it
was just out.[1]

[Footnote 1: Details in this paragraph are from various sources: e.g.
Wood's; 'Ath. and Fasti and Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy under
the several names, Cattermole's _Literature of the Church of
England_, Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual by Bohn, and the
Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets. See also, for Jeremy Taylor,
Evelyn's _Diary and Correspondence_, about date 1855-6. Evelyn
was greatly concerned about Cromwell's ordinance for suppressing
preaching and schoolmastering by the Anglican clergy, and about its
probable results for Taylor in particular. See one of his letters to
Taylor (pp. 593-4, ed. 1870).]

The number of wits and men of letters still hostile to the
Protectorate to such a degree that they would undergo the hardships
of exile rather than live in England was, it will have been observed,
comparatively small. This arose from the fact that some who had been
in exile at the death of Charles I, or even afterwards in the train
of Charles II., had reluctantly lost faith in the possibility of a
restoration of the Stuarts, and had returned to England, to join
themselves with those whom we have classed generally as Cromwell's
"subjects by compulsion." Leading cases were those of Hobbes, Sir
William Davenant, and Abraham Cowley; with which, for convenience,
may be associated that of the satirist Cleveland, though _he_
had never gone