The- Crucial Age
INTEREST in the seventeenth century continues to grow, the more it is realised that here was the turning point of our civilisation, more important, certainly for this country, than the Renaissance. For in this time the whole conception of the State, of generally received religion, of manners and of science underwent a fundamental change. And this volume, a Festshrift in honour of Professor Jones, who contributes the first five essays reprinted from various journals, is devoted to an examination of a variety of aspects. Some of the essays, notably that by Mr. Virgil K. Whitaker on Shakespeare's
problem " 'comedies, seem a little out of focus, but are not without an interest of their own, which ingenuity can link on to the main theme. It is to be regretted that the collection is arranged without regard to chronology or the issues discussed, all in the interest of the alphabetical order of the contributors' names, for so the outlines of the story are blurred, and complexity turned into confusion.
In the main it was the story of the dethroning of authority by reason (if only you knew what that was) ; of the undermining of authority by liberty (if only you could define the implications of that); the Great Rebellion was not only an economic struggle, as it is now too much the fashion to consider it, but a great explosion of ideas, a metaphysical war. It was an age of doubt and fear and of amazing optimism. Not only was it inspired by the Baconian vision of the conquest of material nature, but—the discovery was only just round the corner—politics, nay morals themselves, could be reduced to the calculus. " Mad Mathesis " invaded even the soberest heads. But how difficult it all was ! The Dean of Wells. protested to Aubrey " that the curing of the King's Evill by the Touch of the King does puzzle his Philosophie : for whether they were of the House of Yorke, or Lancaster, it did." You cannot go against facts ; but how did
this chime in with the sort of thing Harvey was doing ? A milmber of such threads and conflicts are entered into in various chapters— the ethical calculus by Professor Bredvold, John Foxe and the Puritan revolution by William Haller, medicine in seventeenth- century literature by John F. Fulton, travel as education by George B. Parks. There are two chapters on Milton in connection with politics, and one on Donne and spiritual effort.
The bulk, however, are on the effect of the new thought upon literature, such as Professor Sherburn's on Pope and " The Great Shew of Nature," E. N. Hooker discussing Pope on wit—a most interesting 'attempt to give a new coherence to the " Essay on Criticism "— and Herbert Davis on the conversation of the Augustans, really an essay on Swift's despair at not being able to 'find any which . was good. Dr. Tillyard draws attention to an unduly neglected aspect of Dryden's criticism ; C. D. • Thorpe discourses upon Addison's contribution to criticism ; and Professor Basil Willey winds up the volume with some pages on, " The Touch of Cold Philosophy," which • show how warming the philosophy was. All these are pleasant, well-informed and often revealing essays, but the most thorough-going are those by Professor Jones himself on the change in language so largely due to science. His putting together of passages from Glanvill's Vanity of Dogmatising and the later essays shows startlingly how radical the change was when men exchanged philosophical ideas with each other, greater even than that which pulpit eloquence underwent, these changes, of course, being cause as well as effect. This volume, if not an indispensable addition to our knowledge, once more shows how fascinating it is to delve into this inexhaustible century. BONAMY DOBREE.
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