--Lord
Rochester's revenge.--Elkanah Settle.--John Crowne.--Thomas Otway
rich in miseries.--Dryden assailed by villains.--The ingenious
Abraham Cowley.--The author of "Hudibras."--Young Will Wycherley
and Lady Castlemaine--The story of his marriage.--Andrew Marvell,
poet and politician.--John Bunyan.
The men of genius who lived in the days of the merry monarch have
rendered his reign, like that of Elizabeth, illustrious in the
annals of literature. The fact of "Paradise Lost," the
"Pilgrim's Progress," "Hudibras," and "Alexander's Feast" being
given to the world whilst Charles II. occupied the throne, would
have sufficiently marked the epoch as one exceeding in
intellectual brilliancy; but besides these works, an abundance of
plays, poems, satires, treatises, and histories added fresh
lustre to this remarkable age.
At the period of the restoration, John Milton had reached his
fifty-second year. He had studied in the University of
Cambridge; published the "Masque of Comus;" likewise a treatise
against the Established Church; taught school at Aldersgate
Street; married a wife and advocated divorce; printed a pamphlet
to compose the minds of those disturbed by the murder of Charles
I.; as also a defence of his murderers, justifying the monarch's
execution, for which the author was awarded a thousand pounds;
had become secretary to Cromwell, whom he stooped to flatter; and
had even, on the advent of his majesty's return, written and set
forth "A Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.
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