Fancies Versus FadsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
General
Fancies Versus Fads
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English essays -- 20th century
Of such was the Anti-Puritan party; and the reader may learn more about
it from the author of “The Glass of Fashion.” There he may form a
general idea of how, but for the Puritans, England would have been
abandoned to mere ribaldry and licence; blasted by the blasphemies of
George Herbert; rolled in the mire of the vile materialism of Vaughan;
tickled to ribald laughter by the cheap cynicism and tap-room
familiarities of Crashaw and Treherne. But the same Cavalier tradition
continued into the next age, and indeed into the next century; and the
critic must extend his condemnation to include the brutal buffooneries
of Bishop Ken or the gay and careless worldliness of Jeremy Collier.
Nay, he must extend it to cover the last Tories who kept the tradition
of the Jacobites; the careless merriment of Dean Swift, the godless
dissipation of Dr. Johnson. None of these men were Puritans; all of them
were strong opponents of political and religious Puritanism. The truth
is that English literature bears a very continuous and splendid
testimony to the fact that England was not merely Puritan. Ben Jonson in
“Bartholomew Fair” spoke for most English people, and certainly for most
English poets. Anti-Puritanism was the one thing common to Shakespeare
and Dryden, to Swift and Johnson, to Cobbett and Dickens. And the
historical bias the other way has come, not from Puritan superiority,
but simply from Puritan success. It was the political triumph of the
party, in the Revolution and the resultant commercial industrialism,
that suppressed the testimony of the populace and the poets. Loyalty
died away in a few popular songs; the Cromwellians never had any popular
song to die. English history has moved away from English literature. Our
culture, like our agriculture, is at once very native and very
neglected. And as this neglect is regrettable, if only as neglect of
literature, I will pause in conclusion upon the later period, two
generations after Milton, when the last of the true Tories drank wine
with Bolingbroke or tea with Johnson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account