perform a similar function. This new framework makes of the term roll-call no longer a metaphor but a poetic fact. In Suckling's Sessions of the Poets (1637?), the poets of the time are represented as claimants for the laureateship at the court of Apollo; each argues his claims, and hears them discussed by his fellows; until, finally, Apollo decides in favour of a rich alderman whose money makes up for his lack of skill. The discussion is rather personal than literary, the talk of a coterie of artists and wits, and is interesting as indicating the flavour of literary discussion during the first Caroline period, much as the conversations of Jonson and Drummond shed light on Jacobean taste. Yet, even here, not much has been added since Jonson's day, for lady Would-be, in the third act of Volpone, anticipates, by more than thirty years, the very note of Suckling's criticism, in such lines as these:

Hee [Guarini] has so moderne and facile a veine,

Fitting the time, and catching the court-eare;

Your Petrarch is more passionate, yet hee

In dayes of sonnetting trusted 'hem [i.e. plagiarists] with much;
Dante is hard, and few can understand him;

But for a desperate wit, there's Aretine!

Only his pictures are a little obscene.

The Italian poet Caporali, taking a hint from Lucian, had first systematically used mythological allegory for the purpose of literary criticism or satire; and, in Spain, Cervantes had followed his example in the Voyage to Parnassus. But it was the Italian proseman Boccalini who, in his Ragguagli di Parnaso, gave European prestige to this form; his work was translated and imitated in all the languages of Europe; and, in England, besides Suckling, Sheppard's Socratic Session, or the Arraignment and Conviction of Julius Scaliger (1651) and Wither's(?) Great Assises holden in Parnassus (1645) illustrate the character of its influence. This framework transfigures the dead bones of the old roll-call, and, in Suckling and others, gives wit and fancy an opportunity to enliven the casual utterances of criticism.

As we follow the course of the seventeenth century, we note that the tags which follow the names of the roll-call develop in amplitude. They still remain more or less conventional, but they have been extended from a brief clause or a succession of adjectives to sentences and paragraphs. Thus, D'Avenant, in a page or two, traces the growth of epic poetry from Homer to Spenser, devoting to each poet a paragraph of his own; and though, for example, that on Spenser merely objects to the 'obsolete language,' 'the

unlucky choice of the stanza' and the allegory, critical utterance has become more facile and self-expressive, has, in fact, developed a manner of its own. But it was not until the age of Dryden that the roll-call disappears entirely, and is displaced by the critical study of a poet and his work. The critique of The Silent Woman, the literary portraits of Jonson, Shakespeare and Fletcher, in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), mark a new stage in the growth of English criticism. The commendatory verses of many poets, the new aesthetic of Hobbes, the prose style of Cowley and D'Avenant, and many tentatives in the art of character-writing have made such things possible; but it is the discours and examens of Corneille (1660) that furnished Dryden with his true models. With Dryden, then, the intensive study of works of literature begins, and displaces the mere tags and epithets of the older criticism. But literary history was not born in England for another quarter of a century; and, in Rymer's View of Tragedy (1693), despite an exaggerated animus against Elizabethan tragedy, real learning was placed at the service of criticism, and the first connected account of the rise of modern literatures attempted.

The critical literature of the first half of the century is interesting, therefore, for its direction, rather than for any accomplishment of its own. It revolutionised aesthetic principles, but accomplished little or nothing in the field of concrete criticism. It did not adequately explain or appraise the works of the great poets and playwrights of the Elizabethan age. Englishmen were slowly beginning to realise the greatness of their literary past, but criticism did little to direct or encourage this new taste. The playwrights themselves scattered comments on their own art throughout their plays, and the modern scholar may arrange these isolated utterances at his pleasure into a unified code; yet, no critic of this age brought order and meaning out of the chaos of hints and hopes, and the romantic drama remained without its thoroughgoing exponents or analysts. New ideas in respect to poetry were, indeed, being developed. But, though Jonson elaborated a classical point of view and Hobbes a new aesthetic, these ideas were not consistently or intelligently applied to the literary heritage of the English people. Not until after the restoration was the clash of romantic and classical achievement truly apprehended, and its meaning analysed and explained.

CHAPTER XII

HOBBES AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY

THE philosophical writings which belong to the period following Bacon's death show but slight traces of Bacon's influence. His genius was recognised, and he was quoted, now and again, on special points; but his leading doctrines were generally ignored. No new logic appeared on the lines described in his Novum Organum. The writers of logical treatises followed the traditional scholastic method, or adopted the modifications of it introduced by Ramus. Even Milton's logic, which is founded on that of Ramus, pays no attention to the Baconian revolution. It is worthy of note that, in the middle of the sixteenth century, a beginning had been made at writing works on logic in English. In 1552, Thomas Wilson published The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. The innovation was not without danger at the time, if it be true that his publication on this subject in a vulgar tongue led to the author's imprisonment by the inquisition at Rome. His example was followed, in safer circumstances, by Ralph Lever, who, in his Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft, teaching a perfect way to argue and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words of English derivation in place of the traditional terminology-foreset and backset for 'subject' and 'predicate,' inholder and inbeer for 'substance' and 'accident,' saywhat for 'definition' and so on. This attempt was never taken seriously; and a considerable time had to elapse before English became the usual language for books on logic. In the seventeenth century, as well as in the sixteenth, the demands of the universities made the use of Latin almost essential for the purpose. The work of Richard Crakanthorp, Logicae libri quinque de Praedicabilibus (1622), was one of the best known of these text-books. The question of method, which had ruled the thought of Bacon, was less prominent in the English philosophy of the following period and did not lead to any new work of importance.

Religion is as powerful a stimulus to philosophical thought as science is, and it is apt to lead more directly to the study of ultimate problems. It was the chief interest in the speculative writings of Herbert of Cherbury, and the same interest is even more directly obvious in other writings. In 1599, Sir John Davies had published his philosophical poem Nosce Teipsum, in which a view of the nature of the soul and arguments for its immortality are 'expounded in two elegies.' Utilising Platonic, as well as Aristotelian, ideas, the author worked out a spiritual philosophy in which the soul is regarded as akin to the universal order,

For Nature in man's heart her lawes doth pen;
Prescribing truth to wit, and good to will,
Which doe accuse, or else excuse all men,
For every thought or practise, good or ill:

and, therefore, the soul can find no true satisfaction in earthly things:

Wit, seeking Truth, from cause to cause ascends,

And never rests till it the first attaine:

Will, seeking Good, finds many middle ends,
But never stayes, till it the last doe gaine.

The same influence led to work of a philosophical kind among theologians, usually conveyed in a scholastic manner. In his Atheomastix (1622), Martin Fotherby, bishop of Salisbury, relied chiefly on St Thomas Aquinas in his demonstration of the being of God, and maintained that there is a 'natural prenotion' that there is a God. The work of George Hakewill, archdeacon of Surrey, entitled An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God (1627), touches on philosophy without being genuinely philosophical in character. Bacon is referred to for his 'noble and worthy endeavour... so to mix and temper practice and speculation together, that they may march hand in hand'; but his new method is not spoken of, though both Ramus and Lully are referred to in the section on advances in logic. Nor does the discussion on truth contain any observations beyond the ordinary commonplaces: it does not show any knowledge of Herbert of Cherbury's enquiry, and can hardly have suggested ideas to lord Brooke. The real importance of the book lies in the fact that the author's eyes are turned to the future, not to the past. It is an elaborate argument against the view that the history of the world is a record of deterioration from an earlier golden age. As described on the title-page, it is 'an examination and censure of the common error touching nature's perpetual and universal decay.

Much more important is the work of lord Brooke, in whom the puritan temper was combined with the mystic. Robert Greville, cousin and adopted son of Fulke Greville, first lord Brooke, was born in 1608, and entered parliament in 1628. In the civil war, he acted as a general of the parliamentary army, gained the victory of Kineton in 1642, took Stratford-on-Avon in February 1643 and was killed at the attack on Lichfield a few weeks later. He was an ardent puritan, and, in 1641, wrote A Discourse opening the nature of that Episcopacie which is exercised in England, aimed at the political power of the bishops. In the same year was published his philosophical work The Nature of Truth. In this work, he refuses to distinguish between philosophy and theology. 'What is true philosophy but divinity?' he asks, 'and if it be not true, it is not philosophy.' He appeals to reason and reflection alone for an answer to his question; but his method differs from that of Herbert of Cherbury in dealing with the same subject: it is less logical and thorough, and more mystical. He had 'dived deep,' his editor says, 'into prophetic mysteries.' He was also well read in speculative, especially Neoplatonic, writings. The revival of Platonism had already affected English literature; its influence may be seen in the works of Sir Thomas More, and in Davies's Nosce Teipsum, and it had coloured the Aristotelianism of Everard Digby; but Brooke was the first Englishman to present in an original treatise the fundamental ideas which, later in the same century, bore riper fruit in the works of the Cambridge Platonists. The two doctrines of the unity of reality and the emanation of all things from God rule his thought; and he thinks that difficulties about truth are solved when we see that the understanding, the soul, light and truth are all one: 'all being is but one emanation from above, diversified only in our apprehension.' Faith and reason differ in degree only, not in nature; knowledge and affection are but several shapes under which truth is present to our view: 'what good we know, we are; our act of understanding being an act of union.' The author goes on to explain that all the diversities of things-even space and time themselves are without reality and are only appearances to our apprehension. The whole physical world, accordingly, is merely phenomenal; in it, there is no true being, nor are there any true causes, though it is allowable, 'when you see some things precede others,' to 'call the one a cause the other an effect.' In these expressions have been found anticipations of the idealism of Berkeley and of Hume's theory of causation. In presenting his doctrine, Brooke wrote like a seer,