logic found themselves ruled out of court much as а nisi prius lawyer who, in conducting a case, should endeavour to introduce considerations irrevelant to the exact

legal issue. If we turn the pages of two of the treatises which most stirred the minds of Protestant Europe in the seventeenth century-the Appello Cæsarem of Richard Montague, which appeared in 1626, and the Variations of Bossuet, which appeared in 1688-we see how the treatment of controversy, even in the hands of masters of the art, was thus cribbed, cabined and confined.

The rhetorical exercises were of the same character. Forced analogies, quaint similes, fanciful illustration, the whole constituting a kind of intellectual legerdemain, were made to do duty for genuine research and solid argument. It is only when we peruse some of the surviving specimens of this perverted ingenuity that we fully realize the inestimable service rendered by Bacon's Novum Organum, put forward as the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things and of the true aids of the understanding.' So directly indeed did the Baconian philosophy come in collision with the academic methods of Milton's time, that one of the poet's most distinguished Cambridge contemporaries, Dr. Samuel Collins, the Provost of King's College, declared after reading the Advancement of Learning, that he found himself in a case to begin his studies anew, and that he had lost all the time of his studying before.'

It attests the native power and superiority of Milton's genius that he was able almost entirely to liberate himself from fetters which still so largely trammelled alike the poetry and the prose literature of his age. Of this his Lycidas supplies a striking illustration--a strain of exquisite pathos and beauty rising up amid the forced and jejune conceits which characterize the verses of his fellow

mourners, much like the voice of the lady in his Comus amid the cries of the wanton revellers around her. In his Areopagitica Milton seems himself carried away by this native spirit of independence; and his utterances, noble as is the spirit by which they are dictated, cannot be vindicated from the reproach of neglecting both the historical evidence and the general principles necessary to an adequate conduct of the argument.

John Milton saw his countrymen set forth for America and his sympathy went with them. Generally speaking, no stronger contrast could well be found than that presented by the exiles in the New World and the exiles in the Old. But even across the Atlantic the traditions of an academic education often survived, and verses fraught with fantastic imagery and forced analogies (appearing mostly at funerals and on tombstones), formed the counterpart of the jeux d'esprit of the cavaliers at home. It is touching to note stern Puritans like Peter Bulkley, John Wilson (the first pastor of Boston), John Cotton, and Ann Bradstreet, beguiling the lonely hours amid the wild surroundings of their new life with such effusions-the faint echoes of the culture and the associations of their distant fatherland. But unfortunately while the great poets and dramatists from Shakespeare to Shirley were tabooed, it was from writers like Wither, Quarles, and Du Bartas that America's first poets, if we allow them the name, derived their inspiration.

Estimated simply from the standpoint of literary excellence, this early literature of the New World certainly cannot compare with that which, under the influence of the new school now in course of formation in France, began with the Restoration to appear in England. Of this school, Charles Cotton, the translator of Montaigne and Corneille, affords one of the earliest instances. The taste which he

had acquired for these models of thought and expression had been gained chiefly as a traveller; but Cowley, Crashaw, Denham, Roscommon, Waller, and others, were all resident for longer or shorter periods in France as exiles; while Wycherley is said to have been sent by his father to live there in order to preserve him from Puritan influences. Corneille, Molière, and Boileau became their models; and in some cases a slavish admiration for these writers appears to have resulted in something like contempt for their native English. But affectation of this kind was limited to that narrow circle in whose compositions we discern the inferiority which almost invariably distinguishes the work of the imitator from his original -correctness passing into tameness, ingenuity into forced conceits, and elegance into insipidity. And notwithstanding the defects which undoubtedly characterize this English school fashioning itself on the literature across the Channel, it is only when we turn to that other literature, rising at nearly the same time across the Atlantic, that we become fully aware of how much of culture, of inspiration, and of power the Puritan who aspired to literary excellence had either voluntarily debarred himself or became by the mere conditions of exile deprived. In Cowley's exquisite Hymn to Light we have a striking illustration of a world of delight and æsthetic feeling from which the Puritan stood alike by principle and sympathy altogether excluded. As the glow of national pride and exultation that characterized the later years of Elizabeth's reign grew faint amid the sense of national disaster and humiliation resulting from the Civil War, its place as an inspiration was in some measure supplied by that new sense of advancing knowledge, of triumphs won by the achievements of science. in a less perishable domain, which was destined not merely to restore to England her ancient fame but widely to

extend her material power. The many followed whither the master spirits led. The study of Nature, in its varied fields of investigation, became not only a widely extended \pursuit but a fashion. And the affectation of theological learning which characterized the scholars and the wits of the reign of Charles the First was succeeded by the affectation of scientific tastes on the part of the divines and statesmen of the days of Charles the Second.

J. B. M.