when it did appear complete in six volumes folio, in 1657, was to contain handsome acknowledgment by Walton of this generosity.  Of the incessant literary activity of the Presbyterian Baxter through the Protectorate we need say nothing.  It is more remarkable that there was no interruption of William Prynne’s interminable series of pamphlets on all sorts of public questions, and often violently against the Government.  For the rest, where were the Herricks, the Shirleys, the Clevelands, and the other old Royalist wits and satirists of the lighter sort?  Keeping schools, most of them, or living with friends in the country, and now and then sending out, as before, some light thing in print.  Samuel Butler, a secretary or the like in private families, was yet unknown to fame, but was taking notes and sure to print them some day; and the two most placid and imperturbable men in all England were Browne of Norwich and Izaak Walton.  Browne, all his best known writings published long ago, but appearing in new editions, was contented now with attending his patients; and, when Izaak Walton was not in his house in Clerkenwell (to which neighbourhood he seems to have removed after giving up his shop in Chancery Lane), he was away on some fishing ramble.  His Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man’s Recreation had appeared in May 1653, and a second edition of it was just out.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Details in this paragraph are from various sources:  e.g.  Wood’s; ’Ath. and Fasti and Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy under the several names, Cattermole’s Literature of the Church of England, Lowndes’s Bibliographer’s Manual by Bohn, and the Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets.  See also, for Jeremy Taylor, Evelyn’s Diary and Correspondence, about date 1855-6.  Evelyn was greatly concerned about Cromwell’s ordinance for suppressing preaching and schoolmastering by the Anglican clergy, and about its probable results for Taylor in particular.  See one of his letters to Taylor (pp. 593-4, ed. 1870).]

The number of wits and men of letters still hostile to the Protectorate to such a degree that they would undergo the hardships of exile rather than live in England was, it will have been observed, comparatively small.  This arose from the fact that some who had been in exile at the death of Charles I, or even afterwards in the train of Charles II., had reluctantly lost faith in the possibility of a restoration of the Stuarts, and had returned to England, to join themselves with those whom we have classed generally as Cromwell’s “subjects by compulsion.”  Leading cases were those of Hobbes, Sir William Davenant, and Abraham Cowley; with which, for convenience, may be associated that of the satirist Cleveland, though he had never gone into exile, but had remained in England, taking the risks.—­HOBBES, who had been in Paris since 1641, to be out of the bustle of the English confusions, but who had come into central connexion with the Stuart cause there by his appointment