Puritanism was now to be
oppressed, and the country was to be governed, under a show of
constitutional right, more arbitrarily than ever before. The moral
rebound, too, was tremendous; the debaucheries of the cavaliers of Charles
I. were as nothing in comparison with the lewdness and filth of the court
of Charles II. To say that he brought in French fashions and customs, is
to do injustice to the French: there never was a viler court in Europe
than his own. It is but in accordance with our historical theory that the
literature should partake of and represent the new condition of things;
and the most remarkable illustrations of this are to be found in the works
of Dryden.
It may indeed with truth be said that we have now reached the most
absolute of the literary types of English history. There was no great
event, political or social, which is not mirrored in his poems; no
sentiment or caprice of the age which does not there find expression; no
kingly whim which he did not prostitute his great powers to gratify; no
change of creed, political or religious, of which he was not the
recorder--few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, to which he was not
the convert.
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