The Puritans handled the sword more skillfully than the pen, and the royalists were not disposed to satire during the rule of the Ironside chief. The only great writer of the Puritan age on the Puritan side was Milton, and he was one of the two or three great writers who have shown little sense of humor. CHAPTER X. LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. [Illustration: Cris-cross Rhymes on Love's Crosses, 1640. (Musarum, 306.)] What a change came over the spirit of English art and literature at the Restoration in 1660! Forty years before, when James I. was king, who loathed a Puritan, there was occasionally published a print in which Puritans were treated in the manner of Hudibras. There was one of 1612 in which a crown was half covered by a broad-brimmed hat, with verses reflecting upon "the aspiring, factious Puritan," who presumed to "overlooke his king." There was one in 1636, in the reign of Charles I., aimed at "two infamous upstart prophets," weavers, then in Newgate for heresy, which contains a description of a Puritan at church, which is entirely in the spirit of Hudibras: "His seat in the church is where he may be most seene. In the time of the Sermon he drawes out his tables to take the Notes, but still noting who observes him to take them. At every place of Scripture cited he turnes over the leaves of his Booke, more pleased with the motion of the leaves than the matter of the Text; For he folds downe the leaves though he finds not the place. Hee lifts up the whites of his eyes towards Heaven when hee meditates on the sordid pleasures of the earth; his body being in God's Church, when his mind is in the divel's Chappell." Again, in 1647, two years before the execution of Charles, an extensive and elaborate sheet appeared, in which the ignorant preachers of the day were held up to opprobrium. Each of these "erronious, hereticall, and Mechannick spirits" was exhibited practicing his trade, and a multitude of verses below described the heresies which such teachers promulgated. "Oxford and Cambridge make poore Preachers; Each shop affordeth better Teachers: Oh blessed Reformation!" Among the "mechannick spirits" presented in this sheet we remark "Barbone, the Lether-seller," who figures in many later prints as "Barebones." There are also "Bulcher, a Chicken man;" "Henshaw, a Confectioner, alias an Infectioner;" "Duper, a Cowkeeper;" "Lamb, a Sope-boyler," and a dozen more.