History of English Literature Volume 2 (of 3)Taine, Hippolyte
History
History of English Literature Volume 2 (of 3)
Taine, Hippolyte
English literature -- History and criticism
[Footnote 207: When Raphael comes on earth, the angels who are "under
watch, in honour rise." The disagreeable and characteristic feature of
this heaven is, that the universal motive is obedience, while in Dante's
it is love. "Lowly reverent they bow.... Our happy state we hold, like
yours, while our obedience holds."]
[Footnote 208: Revelation, I. 12.]
[Footnote 209: "Paradise Lost," book I. lines 242-263.]
[Footnote 210: Ibid, lines 106-109.]
[Footnote 211: "Paradise Lost," book I. lines 61-65.]
[Footnote 212: Ibid, book II. lines 587-591.]
[Footnote 213: Ibid, book I. lines 612-615.]
[Footnote 214: Ibid, lines 100-109.]
[Footnote 215: "Paradise Lost," book II. lines 643-678.]
[Footnote 216: "Paradise Lost," book VII. lines 210-292.]
[Footnote 217: "Paradise Lost," book IV. lines 591-609.]
[Footnote 218: Ibid, lines 750-757.]
BOOK III.--THE CLASSIC AGE
CHAPTER FIRST
The Restoration
_Part I.--The Roisterers_
When we alternately look at the works of the court painters of Charles I
and Charles II, and pass from the noble portraits of Vandyke to the
figures of Lely, the fall is sudden and great; we have left a palace,
and we light on a bagnio.
Instead of the proud and dignified lords, at once cavaliers and
courtiers, instead of those high-born yet simple ladies who look at the
same time princesses and modest maidens, instead of that generous and
heroic company, elegant and resplendent, in whom the spirit of the
Renaissance yet survived, but who already displayed the refinement of
the modern age, we are confronted by perilous and importunate
courtesans, with an expression either vile or harsh, incapable of shame
or of remorse.[219] Their plump, smooth hands toy fondlingly with
dimpled fingers; ringlets of heavy hair fall on their bare shoulders;
their swimming eyes languish voluptuously; an insipid smile hovers on
their sensual lips. One is lifting a mass of dishevelled hair which
streams over the curves of her rosy flesh; another falls down with
languor, and uncloses a sleeve whose soft folds display the full
whiteness of her arms. Nearly all are half draped; many of them seem to
be just rising from their beds; the rumpled dressing-gown clings to the
neck, and looks as though it were soiled by a night's debauch; the
tumbled under-garment slips down to the hips: their feet tread the
bright and glossy silk. With bosoms uncovered, they are decked out in
all the luxurious extravagance of prostitutes; diamond girdles, puffs of
lace, the vulgar splendor of gilding, a superfluity of embroidered and
rustling fabrics, enormous head-dresses, the curls and fringes of which,
rolled up and sticking out, compel notice by the very height of their
shameless magnificence. Folding curtains hang round them in the shape of
an alcove, and the eyes penetrate through a vista into the recesses of a
wide park, whose solitude will not ill serve the purpose of their
pleasures.
Section I.--The Excesses of Puritanism
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