and why? Have any changes taken place in Satan's appearance? What characteristic of Satan is stressed as the source of his downfall? What foreshadowing of his future course of action is given, and where? Is there any difference in mind and character between Satan and Beelzebub?

(c) The verse. Where do the principal pauses (marked by semicolon and period) usually come, in the midst of a verse or at the end? Do you discover any groups, like stanzas, in which the verse is sustained without pause through several lines? These give an effect somewhat like that of stanzas. Why are they better suited to Milton's purpose than stanzaic verse like that of The Faerie Queene?

Compare Milton's blank verse with that of Shakespeare by taking a passage of ten or twelve lines from this selection and a passage of equal extent from Macbeth. It would be well to choose one of Macbeth's soliloquies and compare it with one of Satan's.

What variations in meter do you notice in the verse of Paradise Lost? Find substitutions of trochee, anapest, etc., for the prevailing iambus. What effects are gained?

Study intensively the diction, or language, by choosing words or phrases that appeal to you for sound, picture-making power, or precision.

Find a passage that seems to you to justify the epithet "organ-voiced" as applied to Milton's

verse.

4. Some of the topics given above may be used for oral or written reports. Other topics may be chosen, as follows:

(a) Milton and Vergil: the invocation; the statement of epic-purpose; the hostile agent (a supernatural being who is the cause of the action); the style.

(b) Milton's use of words, chiefly of Latin origin, in exact accordance with their etymology. Frequently such words are used by him with a meaning different from that of ordinary use. Study the following words intensively, using the dictionary to get etymologies if necessary: mortal (line 2); inspire (7); seduced (33); horrid (51); confounded (53); secure (261); astonished

(266); oblivious (266); mansion (268); entranced (301); perfidious (308); sojourners (309); abject (312); astonishment (317).

(c) The Council in Hell. Study the speeches in Book II, using a complete text of Paradise Lost, to bring out the character of each speaker and the substance of his argument. The speech of Belial is a very effective piece of refutation, worth careful study by all who are interested in debating.

(d) Individual pupils, or groups, may report on later Books, especially VII and IX.

Changes after the Restoration.

seasons.

The

Changes After the Restoration. change from one ideal of life to another is always gradual, like the change in the We do not say, "Yesterday it was summer; today it is winter." After a time of almost imperceptible or unnoticed alteration in nature, we at length look upon a world that has been transformed. So it was in England after the Restoration, in May of 1660.

The theaters opened again and were crowded with gay spectators. The old plays were revived-Shakespeare's and Jonson's and the romantic dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher. Milton's Paradise Lost, the last great expression of Renaissance literature, appeared seven years after King Charles rode in triumph through the London streets, and it found an audience. Despite the corruption and licentiousness of the court, the seeming decay of all decency and the repudiation of all the stern morality of Puritan days, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, an allegory of the Christian life, clothed in the simple language of the Bible and speaking of sin, repentance, and salvation, was published in 1678 and was read by thousands as a work almost inspired by God.

Yet, one day, men became conscious of change. They responded less eagerly to the burning idealisms of the Elizabethan period. The dramas of Shakespeare seemed, indeed, the work of genius, but

it was a wild and romantic genius, in need of pruning and restraint. Othello was regarded as a monstrous and unreal tragedy. The introduction of the drunken porter in Macbeth was thought to be a sin against good taste. Lear was more sinned against than sinning, so according to the rules of poetic justice he should be rewarded by the return of his throne. Hamlet was complained of because he fought a duel with Laertes, who was beneath him in rank, and because such vulgar creatures as the grave-diggers were permitted to appear on the same platform with a prince of the blood. They began to "improve" Shakespeare. A new version of Lear, with a happy ending, was written, and it was this garbled version that held the stage until the nineteenth century. Laertes was made a noble, so that he might fight a duel with the princely Hamlet. Scenes that were thought to be "low" we omitted. Dryden wrote a new version of Antony and Cleopatra, which he called All for Love, in which Shakespeare's frequent changes of scene and his violation of what were called the unities of time and action, were corrected.

were

Other illustrations might be given of the changes that took place in the ideals of literary excellence. Some of these changes will be apparent as we go on with our story. They may all be summed up by saying that for nearly a hundred years following the

Restoration, there was a reaction against the romanticism that had been the chief characteristic of literature and life in England before that time. Violent emotions, undue enthusiasms, were to be repressed, or if they were suffered to appear, it must be with due regard to good form and in accordance with stated rules. In an essay of the time, a young woman is represented as speaking with enthusiasm of a comedy that she had witnessed. Her lover, who was a literary critic, told her that it was a vile comedy because it transgressed all the rules. To her reply that it had amused her so that she just had to laugh, he responded that she had no business being amused at such an irregular piece of writing. The Elizabethans had been interested in story and character. They had not thought much about strict rules of form. The new age was interested in character, but not in individuality. It preferred people who were types-the typical lover, the typical king, the typical heroine. The "kinds" or forms of literature had set rules; they could not trespass on each other; like the characters in their fictions, they must be "typical." Writers and critics put a bridle on Pegasus, and confined the imagination within the limits of a formal garden.

Yet great service was rendered by the writers of the Restoration period. Prose, in particular, became effective in the modern sense. Satire, both verse and prose, held a new mirror up to nature. The modern essay was created and also the modern novel, destined to take the place of pastoral and epic and the wandering prose romances that had supplied the fiction in earlier times. Men began to take a new interest in literary criticism, that is, in the analysis of a piece of writing in an effort to discover the reasons for its success or failure.

THE NEW DRAMA

Dramatic Rules. At first this interest in criticism was directed toward the drama. French critics had attained a commanding position because of their adaptation of the rules of Aristotle to the requirements of their drama. The French also had great dramatists of their own, men like Racine and Corneille in tragedy and Molière in

comedy, and the influence of this drama as well as of the criticism that accompanied it was very great. In his important Essay of Dramatic Poesy Dryden compares the French drama with the work of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. The relative advantages of rime and blank verse in tragedy, and the three unities, are discussed in this essay. These unities were: first, that of action, which meant that the plot of a drama should be single, without any subplot such as the Elizabethans were fond of using; second, the unity of time, which meant that the entire action of the play should take place within twentyfour hours; and, third, the unity of place, which meant that the action should not shift about from one place to another, as was common in Shakesperare's plays. In his essay, Dryden gives a clear statement of these principles, with many illustrations drawn from old and new plays, and he also subjects them to criticism.

Heroic Plays. Many plays were written in heroic couplets (iambic pentameter, riming in couplets), and were supposed to be dramatized heroic romance. Their heroes were commonly historical persons, often great conquerors, but they always subordinated public matters to the de