SUMMARY OF THE PURITAN PERIOD.  The half century between 1625 and 1675 is called the Puritan period for two reasons:  first, because Puritan standards prevailed for a time in England; and second, because the greatest literary figure during all these years was the Puritan, John Milton.  Historically the age was one of tremendous conflict.  The Puritan struggled for righteousness and liberty, and because he prevailed, the age is one of moral and political revolution.  In his struggle for liberty the Puritan overthrew the corrupt monarchy, beheaded Charles I, and established the Commonwealth under Cromwell.  The Commonwealth lasted but a few years, and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 is often put as the end of the Puritan period.  The age has no distinct limits, but overlaps the Elizabethan period on one side, and the Restoration period on the other.

The age produced many writers, a few immortal books, and one of the world’s great literary leaders.  The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and the diversity is due to the breaking up of the ideals of political and religious unity.  This literature differs from that of the preceding age in three marked ways:  (1) It has no unity of spirit, as in the days of Elizabeth, resulting from the patriotic enthusiasm of all classes. (2) In contrast with the hopefulness and vigor of Elizabethan writings, much of the literature of this period is somber in character; it saddens rather than inspires us. (3) It has lost the romantic impulse of youth, and become critical and intellectual; it makes us think, rather than feel deeply.

In our study we have noted (1) the Transition Poets, of whom Daniel is chief; (2) the Song Writers, Campion and Breton; (3) the Spenserian Poets, Wither and Giles Fletcher; (4) the Metaphysical Poets, Donne and Herbert; (5) the Cavalier Poets, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling; (6) John Milton, his life, his early or Horton poems, his militant prose, and his last great poetical works; (7) John Bunyan, his extraordinary life, and his chief work, The Pilgrim’s Progress; (8) the Minor Prose Writers, Burton, Browne, Fuller, Taylor, Baxter, and Walton.  Three books selected from this group are Browne’s Religio Medici, Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying, and Walton’s Complete Angler.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Milton.  Paradise Lost, books 1-2, L’Allegro, Il
Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and selected Sonnets,—­all in Standard English
Classics; same poems, more or less complete, in various other series;
Areopagitica and Treatise on Education, selections, in Manly’s English
Prose, or Areopagitica in Arber’s English Reprints, Clarendon Press Series,
Morley’s Universal Library, etc.

Minor Poets.  Selections from Herrick, edited by Hale, in Athenaeum Press Series; selections from Herrick, Lovelace, Donne, Herbert, etc., in Manly’s English Poetry, Golden Treasury, Oxford Book of English Verse, etc.; Vaughan’s Silex Scintillans, in Temple Classics, also in the Aldine Series; Herbert’s The Temple, in Everyman’s Library, Temple Classics, etc.