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The writer's warmest acknowledgments are due for the advice and assistance he has received from Mr. J. Bass Mullinger, who, besides contributing an Introduction and the sections on Cowley, Hacket, Falkland, and the Cambridge Platonists, has revised the entire work both in manuscript and in proof. To the suggestions which he has offered, the writer has throughout been largely indebted. He also desires to express his thanks to Professor Hales for assistance very kindly afforded in connexion with various points.

DEVONPORT,

March, 1897.

J. HOWARD B. MASTERMAN.

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CHAPTER VII. SIR THOMAS BROWNE

CHAPTER VIII. THOMAS FULLER

CHAPTER IX. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS

Prynne-Taylor-The Latitudinarians -- Lord Falkland
Chillingworth Hales Ussher Gauden Other

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Writers.

INTRODUCTION.

THE age in which John Milton lived and wrote was one of unprecedented change and revolution. Opinion and belief, theory and practice, alike in politics, science, and theology, passed through a series of mutations with respect to which previous history and national experience afforded but little guidance and no parallel. The royal power, wielded with so much dignity by the last of the Tudors, was extinguished on the scaffold. The priestly power, albeit adorned with saintly virtues, great erudition and commanding eloquence, was overthrown and silenced. The royal heir became an exile in the Old World, a wanderer on the face of the earth. Many of the best and bravest of his father's subjects were in exile in the New World-fugitives across the ocean for faith and liberty, to raise amid virgin forests and by silent unknown rivers the temple and the psalm. At home there was everywhere strife, war, and revolution ; the press teemed with controversial pamphlets; from north and south, from east and west, men hastened to decide their differences on the field of battle; while in the seats of learning ancient traditions and venerated names were repudiated and ignored, and the schismatic of yesterday appeared as the authorized instructor of to-day. We have to remember that John Milton not only witnessed all these widespread and radical changes, but that he lived to see

the new order of things itself reversed,—the throne restored, the priesthood again in honour, and learning summoning back its discarded teachers. It would be singular indeed if he himself had remained exempt from change. Imperial as was his genius, and keen as was his intellectual foresight, there is ample evidence in his own writings that his views also became modified, and reflected the vicissitudes around. The history alike of this revolution and this reaction stands indeed recorded and mirrored in our national literature far more fully and distinctly than any previous experiences in the national life. The increased sense of power inherited from the Elizabethan era continued to stir and vivify the feelings and the imagination of the English race long after the great queen was dead. Few such striking contrasts are to be found in the literature of any nation as that presented by the tone that pervaded the writings of Englishmen in the half century preceding the reign of Elizabeth and that of the twenty years which preceded the reign of James I. In the earlier period the great majority of Englishmen still trembled at the decrees of the Vatican and the power of Spain; they were still the tardy apish nation limping in base imitation' of Italian manners and Italian models, and regarded alike by the Spaniard and the Italian with contempt, as their inferiors in statecraft, in mental power, in scholarship, and in refinement. How largely all this was changed even at the time of Spenser's death, and still more at the time when Shakespeare died, it devolves upon other pages than these to shew.

In seeking to estimate the influences and traditions handed down to the age of Milton, we soon become aware that they must be referred to two distinct categories, according as they belong to the literature of learning or to that more popular literature in which the national tendencies are

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