THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

and Dryden. No clear distinction between scientific and humanistic knowledge, or between specialist spheres of
human enterprise, was drawn until late in the nineteenth century. In his confident The History of the Royal Society of
London, begun as early as 1663 and published in 1667, Thomas Sprat (1635-1713) attempted to define the role of
empirical thought in ‘this Learned and Inquisitive Age’ and to defend the record of the ‘Illustrious Company, which
has already laid such excellent Foundations of so much good to Mankind’. ‘The increase of Experiments will be so far
from hurting’, he insists, ‘that it will be many waies advantageous, above other Studies, to the wonted Courses of
Education’. Natural Philosophy, Sprat maintained, was the key discipline of the new age; it both helped in the
advance of industry and national prosperity and provided a reasoned prop to Anglican Christianity. Moreover, the
very nature of pragmatic scientific enquiry was also antipathetic to the disruptive ‘passions, and madness of that
dismal Age’ of the Civil War and the Republic.
As a practical statesman of the 1640s and the 1660s, and a loyal servant of the Crown, Edward Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon (1609-74) recognized in the Restoration settlement a judicious return to a balanced constitution of the state
in which order stemmed from an Anglican monarch obedient to the law. Like
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Sprat, he believed that empiricism and pragmatism should be preferred to idealism and to the tunnel-vision so
characteristic of much Puritan radicalism. In common with Sprat’s History of the Royal Society, Clarendon’s The
True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (begun in 1646, completed during his second
exile in 1671-4, published 1702-4) demonstrates the extent to which certain dominant and devout English thinkers
had moved away from the conviction that the Day of Judgement was at hand. Their Histories are not concerned with
eschatology or with the impulse to restore an earthly paradise but with the idea of progressive development. For Sprat,
God’s purposes are revealed in the investigation of the laws of created nature. For Clarendon, the severe political
disruptions of the mid-century provide monitory signals to the opening future and to those rebuilding the state
according to historical principles. His History traces the breakdown of the institutions in which he most trusts and the
progress of a ‘rebellion’ against duly ordained order. At its conclusion he briefly recognizes ‘the merciful hand of
God’ in the ‘miraculous restoration of the Crown, and the Church, and the just rights of Parliament’ and he somewhat
tentatively trusts that the providential process will continue: ‘no nation under heaven can ever be more happy if God
shall be pleased to add establishment and perpetuity to the blessings he then restored.’ Although such royalist,
conservative prejudices broadly determine the nature of his argument, he can be a sharp enough critic of those he once
served or advised. Clarendon remains amongst the most observant of the many analysts of the character and policies
of Charles I, praising real enough virtues and probing the all too disastrous shortcomings: ‘He was, if ever any, the
most worthy of the title of an honest man; so great a lover of justice, that no temptation could dispose him to a
wrongful action, except it was so disguised to him that he believed it to be just ... He was very punctual and regular in
his devotions ... and was so severe an exactor of gravity and reverence in all mention of religion, that he could never
endure any light or profane word, with what sharpness of wit soever it was covered ... His kingly virtues had some
mixture and allay, that hindered them from shining in full lustre, and from producing those fruits they should have
been attended with. He was not in his nature very bountiful, though he gave very much ... He was very fearless in his
person; but, in his riper years not very enterprising. He had an excellent understanding, but was not confident enough
of it; which made him oftentimes change his own opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of men that did not judge
so well as himself.’ Although this last sentence expresses something of Clarendon’s own impatience with his
sometime master’s inconsistency, he writes more in irritation than in anger. His clear, moderated, clausal style allows
for an easy interplay of praise and dispraise, compliment and the withdrawal of compliment, statement and
qualification. Clarendon’s works were presented by his heirs to the University of Oxford and from the considerable
profits earned by the publication of the History a new printing-house, named for the historian, was constructed. These
profits testify to the degree of esteem in which the weight of
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Clarendon’s opinions, his political assessments and, above all, his careful style were held by the generations that
immediately succeeded him. They were generations that believed in the merits, principles, and inheritance of a very
different revolution from that of the 1640s.
The Poetry of the Restoration Period: Rochester and Dryden
Charles I’s famously happy, faithful, and fruitful marriage was not mirrored by that of his eldest son. If the first