The English writers of this period were strongly influenced by the contemporary literature of France, by the comedies of Moliere, the tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and the satires, epistles, and versified essays of Boileau.  Many of the Restoration writers—­Waller, Cowley, Davenant, Wycherley, Villiers, and others—­had been in France during the exile, and brought back with them French tastes.  John Dryden (1631-1700), who is the great literary figure of his generation, has been called the first of the moderns.  From the reign of Charles II., indeed, we may date the beginnings of modern English life.  What we call “society” was forming, the town, the London world.  “Coffee, which makes the politician wise,” had just been introduced, and the ordinaries of Ben Jonson’s time gave way to coffee-houses, like Will’s and Button’s, which became the head-quarters of literary and political gossip.  The two great English parties, as we know them to-day, were organized:  the words Whig and Tory date from this reign.  French etiquette and fashions came in, and French phrases of convenience—­such as coup de grace, bel esprit, etc.—­began to appear in English prose.  Literature became intensely urban and partisan.  It reflected city life, the disputes of faction, and the personal quarrels of authors.  The politics of the great rebellion had been of heroic proportions, and found fitting expression in song.  But in the Revolution of 1688 the issues were constitutional and to be settled by the arguments of lawyers.  Measures were in question rather than principles, and there was little inspiration to the poet in Exclusion Bills and Acts of Settlement.

Court and society, in the reign of Charles II. and James II., were shockingly dissolute, and in literature, as in life, the reaction against Puritanism went to great extremes.  The social life of the time is faithfully reflected in the diary of Samuel Pepys.  He was a simple-minded man, the son of a London tailor, and became, himself, secretary to the admiralty.  His diary was kept in cipher, and published only in 1825.  Being written for his own eye, it is singularly outspoken; and its naive, gossipy, confidential tone makes it a most diverting book, as it is, historically, a most valuable one.

Perhaps the most popular book of its time was Samuel Butler’s Hudibras (1663-1664), a burlesque romance in ridicule of the Puritans.  The king carried a copy of it in his pocket, and Pepys testifies that it was quoted and praised on all sides.  Ridicule of the Puritans was nothing new.  Zeal-of-the-land Busy, in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, is an early instance of the kind.  There was nothing laughable about the earnestness of men like Cromwell, Milton, Algernon Sidney, and Sir Henry Vane.  But even the French Revolution had its humors; and as the English Puritan Revolution gathered head and the extremer sectaries pressed to the front—­Quakers, New Lights, Fifth Monarchy Men, Ranters, etc.,—­its