=2. The Religious Question.= The strength of the religious-political passions of the time is reflected in the current literature. The religion of the King was suspect; that of his brother James was avowedly Papist; and James was the heir-apparent to the crown. There was a prevalent suspicion of the Catholics, which, though it might have been groundless, was of such depth and intensity that it colors all the writings of the time. The lies of Titus Oates added to the popular frenzy, so that when the Earl of Shaftesbury sought to exclude James from the throne and supplant him by the Duke of Monmouth it needed all the efforts of Charles (himself secretly a Roman Catholic) to save his brother. The famous poem of Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, is an outstanding example of a kind of poem that abounded during those troubled years. =3. The Revolution (1688).= James succeeded to the throne in 1685; but so soon did he reveal his Roman Catholic prejudices that he was rejected in three years and was replaced by Protestant sovereigns. Henceforth religious passions diminish in intensity; and the literature of the succeeding years tends to emphasize the political rather than the religious side of public affairs. THE NEW CLASSICISM By the year 1660 Elizabethan romanticism had all but spent itself. Of the great figures of the earlier era only one survived, John Milton, and he had still to write _Paradise Lost_; but in everything Milton was of the past. At the Restoration he retired and worked in obscurity, and his great poem reveals no signs of the time in which his later years were cast. At the Restoration the break with the past was almost absolute. It involved our literature in the deepest degree; subject and style took on a new spirit and outlook, a different attitude and aim. Hence a post-Restoration period is often set up as the converse and antithesis of the previous Elizabethan age. It is called _classical_, as opposed to the Elizabethan _romanticism_. Though the contrast between the two epochs need not be over-emphasized, yet the differences are very great. Let us see in what respects the new spirit is shown. =1. Imitation of the Ancients.= Lacking the genius of the Elizabethans, the authors of the time turned to the great classical writers, in particular to the Latin writers, for guidance and inspiration. This habit, quite noticeable during the time of Dryden, deepened and hardened during the succeeding era of Pope--so much so that the latter laid down as a final test of excellence Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy them.