Elizabethan prose.
The reign4 of Elizabeth and the first years of James, which cover the period of the Later Renaissance5 in England, were times of poetry and not of prose. It is true that much prose was written, that some of it is admirable, and that more is interesting. It is also true that some of the greatest masters of English prose were alive, and were working in these years. Yet these men, whose chief was Bacon, belong, by their character, their influence, and by the dates of their greatest achievements, to the generations described as Jacobean and Caroline. In the Elizabethan time proper there is but one very[260] great name among prose-writers, that of Hooker; while before him and around him there are many whose work was meritorious6, or interesting, or curious—anything, in fact, but great—and of not a few of them it has to be said that in the long-run they were not profitable.
The difficulty of marshalling these men of letters in an orderly way is not small. The chronological7 arrangement, besides being ill-adapted to contemporaries, does not show their real relations to one another, or their place in English literature. The division by subject is utterly9 mechanical, when very different matter was handled in the same style and often by the same men. Nash is always Nash, whether he was writing Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, or Have with you to Saffron Walden, or The Unfortunate Traveller. We shall be better able to make a survey of this side of the literature of the Later Renaissance in England if we class its prose-writers by their spirit and their style, and treat their dates and their matter (which, however, are not to be dismissed as of no importance) as subordinate.
Two schools of writers.
If this classification, then, is permitted, we may divide the Elizabethan prose-writers into those whose aim it was to give “English matter in the English tongue for Englishmen,” and those who strove for something better, more ornate, lofty, peculiar10, and, as they held, more literary, than was to be reached by the pursuit of this modest purpose. The chief of the first in order of time was Ascham,[261] who, however, belonged to an earlier generation, though he died in the queen’s reign, and part of his work was published after his death. The great exemplar of the second was Lyly. In neither case did the followers11 merely imitate their leader. There is much in Hooker which is not in Ascham. The enredados razones—the roundabout affectations of the authors of the Spanish Libros de Caballerías—may have had some influence on Sidney, who certainly knew them. Rabelais and Aretino were much read and imitated by some who also “parled Euphues.” But the distinction holds good none the less. On the one side are those who, having something to say, were content to say it perspicuously. On the other were those who, whether they had something to say or whether they were simply determined13 to be talking, were careful to give their utterances14 some stamp of distinction. If the first were liable to become pedestrian, the second were threatened by an obvious danger. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the writer who has got tired of milking the cow, and wants to milk the bull, to escape sheer affectation—which affectation, again, is in the great majority of cases a trick, a juggle15 with words repeated over and over again.
The prose which was first written for literary purposes in Elizabeth’s time was an inheritance from the reign of Henry VIII. It was the plain downright style of Ascham—the style of a man who thought in Latin, and turned it into good current English.
[262]
Webbe and Puttenham.
Yet the writers who were content to be as plain and downright as Ascham do not require many words. Such treatises17 as Webbe’s Discourse18 of English Poetrie, printed in 1586, or the Arte of English Poesie, published in 1589, and attributed to George Puttenham by Carew in 1614, are interesting, but it cannot be said that they hold an important place in English literature, or had any considerable effect. The Arte of English Poesie is indeed a very sane19 and thorough critical treatise16, one proof among others that if so many of the Elizabethan writers were wild and shapeless, it was not because none in their time thought wisely on questions of literary principle and of form. The explanation of their extravagance may be more safely looked for elsewhere. When Nash was reproached for his “boisterous20 compound words,” he answered, “That no wind that blows strong but is boisterous, no speech or words of any power or force to confute, or persuade, but must be swelling21 and boisterous.” This is Brant?me’s excuse for the rodomontade, that superb and swelling words go well with daring deeds. The Elizabethans were so vehement22 and headlong, that they sought naturally for the “word of power,” for the altisonant and ear-filling in language, and were more tolerant of bombast23 than of the pedestrian. The sentence. Their general inability to confine themselves to the sentence may be excused on the same ground. They felt so much, and so strongly, that they could not stop to disentangle and arrange. Certainly if Englishmen sinned in this respect it was against the[263] light. Models were not wanting to them, and they were not unaware24 of the virtue25 of being clear and coherent. Whoever the author of Martin Marprelate’s Epistle may have been—Penry, Udall, Barrow, or another—he knew a bad sentence as well as any of the Queen Anne men. He fixes, as any of them might have done, on the confused heap of clauses which did duty for sentences in Dean John Bridges’s Defence of the Government of the Church of England. “And learned brother Bridges,” he writes, “a man might almost run himself out of breath before he could come to a full point in many places in your book. Page 69, line 3, speaking of the extraordinary gifts in the Apostles’ time, you have this sweet learning,[77] ‘Yea some of them have for a great part of the time, continued even till our times, and yet continue, as the operation of great works, or if they mean miracles, which were not ordinary, no not in that extraordinary time, and as the hypocrites had them, so might and had divers26 of the Papists, and yet their cause never the better, and the like may we say of the gifts of speaking with tongues which have not been with study before learned, as Anthony, &c., and divers also among the ancient fathers, and some among the Papists, and some among us, have not been destitute27 of the gifts of prophesying28, and much more may I say this of the gift of healing, for none of those gifts or[264] graces given then or since, or yet to men, infer the grace of God’s election to be of necessity to salvation29.’”
The Dean’s meaning reveals itself at the third or fourth reading, but this is the style of Mrs Nickleby. Martin Marprelate saw its vices30, and noted31 on the margin32, “Hoo hoo, Dean, take breath and then to it again,” as Swift himself might have done. Dr Bridges is no authority in English literature, but he was a learned man, and must have had some practice in preaching. Yet we see that he fell into a confusion which at any time after the seventeenth century would have been a proof either of extreme ignorance, or of some such defect of power to express himself as accounts for the obscurity of Castlereagh. Dean Bridges shows only the disastrous33 consequences of that disregard of the proper limit of the sentence which was common with some of the greatest writers of his time. Take, for instance, this passage from Sir Walter Raleigh’s account of the loss of the Revenge, published in 1591. He begins admirably: “All the powder of the Revenge was now spent, all her pikes were broken, forty of her best men slain35, and the most part of the rest hurt.” Several rapid sentences follow, and then we come to:[78] “Sir Richard finding himself in this distress36, and unable any longer to make resistance having endured in this fifteen hours’[265] fight, the assault of fifteen several Armadoes, all by turns aboard him, and by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery37, besides many assaults and entries, and that himself and the ship must needs be possessed38 by the enemy, who were now all cast in a ring about him; the Revenge not able to move one way or other but as she was moved with the waves and billow of the sea, commanded the Master Gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute39 man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby40 nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards, seeing in so many hours’ fight, and with so great a navy they were not able to take her, having had fifteen hours’ time, fifteen thousand men, and fifty and three sail of men of war to perform it withal. And persuaded the company or as many as he could induce to yield themselves unto God, and to the mercy of none else, but as they had like valiant41 resolute men repulsed42 so many enemies, they should not now shorten the honour of their nation, by prolonging their own lives for a few hours or a few days.”
This is the style of a writer who does not know when a sentence has come to an end, and who, when he writes one which is properly constructed, does it mainly by good fortune. If it is more intelligible43 than Dr Bridges, the cause of the superiority lies at least partly in this, that Raleigh had the easier task to perform. He had only to state facts, not to expound44 doctrine45.
While making allowance for the inward and spiritual cause of the invasion of English by the[266] long, confused, overladen sentence, it must also be confessed that the evil was largely due to the prevalence of affected47 styles of writing, which lent themselves to over-elaboration. Two bad models were set before Englishmen about the middle of the queen’s reign, and they unfortunately became, and remained for long, exceedingly popular—Lyly’s euphuism, and the wiredrawn finicking style of Sidney’s Arcadia, to which no name has ever been given. The lives of these authors have already been dealt with under another head. Their style, as shown in their stories, and its effect on English literature, are the matters in hand. Euphuism and the manner of the Arcadia appear to have been elaborated by their authors about the same time, though Lyly takes precedence in the order of publication. Euphues, the Anatomy48 of Wit, was printed in 1579, Euphues and his England in the following year.[79]
Euphuism.
Euphuism has become a name for literary affectation, and is in that sense often used with very little precision. It is a very peculiar form of affectation. The two main features of the style—the mechanical antitheses49 and the abuse of similes—have been described already. Euphues, in so far as it is a story, is as near as may be naught50. The hero from whom it takes its name is the grandfather of all virtuous51, solemn, and didactic prigs. He makes two excursions into the world from his native Athens. In the first he induces a lady at[267] Naples to jilt her lover Philautus, and is by her most justly jilted in turn. He floods southern Italy with antithetical platitude52, and retires to Athens. Then Euphues and Philautus come to England, where the second, after philandering53 with one lady, marries another. Euphues remains54 didactic and superior. At last he goes back to a cave in Silexedra. There is a great deal of praise of Queen Elizabeth in the second part, as indeed there was in all the literature of her time as high as Shakespeare’s plays and the Ecclesiastical Polity. There are also pages of such matter as this: “But as the cypress55-tree the more it is watered the more it withereth, and the oftener it is lopped the sooner it dieth, so unbridled youth the more it is also by grave advice counselled or due correction controlled, the sooner it falleth to confusion, hating all reasons that would bring it from folly56, as that tree doeth all remedies, that should make it fertile.” Unbridled youth might have answered that if lopping and watering are bad for the cypress he must be a poor forester who persists in lopping and watering. But the youth of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, which was unbridled enough, was also more respectful. It listened to the due correction and grave counsel of Euphues with deference57. It did more, for it imitated him. The unbridled Nash euphuised, and so did many another. Alongside the fire from heaven, and elsewhere, of the Elizabethan time, there was an unending wishy-washy, though frequently turbid58, flow of copy-book heading, which came from the great Lylyan source. It looks strange that a[268] time which loved Tamburlaine and produced the great lyric59, should also have delighted in this square-toed finical vacuity60. But perhaps, again, it is not so wonderful. There was also in the Elizabethan time a liking61 for what looked superior to the common herd62. About the Court there was much foppery, and there were many who wished to resemble the fine gentlemen of the Court, while the reviving morality of the age, compatible as it was with much individual profligacy63, made men respectful of virtuous commonplace. With the minority of Edward VI. and the brutality65 of the Court of Henry VIII. close behind them, it was as yet hardly the case that “the cardinal66 virtues67 were to be taken for granted among English gentlemen.” Surrey may have been jesting when he told his sister to make herself the king’s mistress, but what a society that must have been in which a brother, and he “a mirror of chivalry68,” thought this a mere12 jest. Now Lyly was very moral, a fop to his fingers’ ends, and with all his oddity and his pedantry69, there is a real, though very artificial, distinction about him. Finally, there were as yet few and insignificant70 rivals. It is not then at all surprising that his style was taken up at Court as “the thing,” and accepted by the honest admiration71, to say nothing of the snobbery72, of the outer world.
Lyly sinned by setting an example of a stilted73 style; but his sentence (for he had but one) is as complete as the constant use of the formula, “As the A is B, so the C is D, and the more E is F the more G is H,”[269] can make it. The Arcadia. With Sidney’s Arcadia[80] we come to another kind of affectation. The circumstances in which it was written must be taken into account. Sir Philip Sidney wrote to please his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, a lady who was somewhat of a précieuse, and who was all her life the centre of some literary coterie74. Her patronage75 of the Senecan play shows that her leanings were towards the superfine, and away from what was natural to Englishmen. The Arcadia, therefore, is coterie work, and does not seem to have been looked upon as very serious by Sir Philip himself. It was written by fits and starts, and sent off to his sister in instalments. The date of composition must have been about 1580 and later, but it was not published till after the author’s death in 1584, and remains a fragment, though a large one. The Arcadia is much longer than the “tedious brief” masterpiece of Lyly, even without taking into account the verse, of which much is written in the classic metres. It is also far more interesting. Although we are accustomed to speak of it as a pastoral, mainly, it may be, on the strength of the name, it is much more a Libro de Caballerías. There is a pastoral element in it unquestionably, as there is in the stories of Feliciano de Silva, but in the main its matter is that of the books of “Knightly77 Deeds”—challenges and defiances, combats of champions, loves of cavaliers and ladies, the rout78 of mobs of plebeians79 by the single arm of the knight76. There[270] are wicked knights80 who drag off ladies on the pommel of their saddles and beat them, good knights who rescue these victims, captures and deliverances of damsels, and everywhere the finest sentiments or the most extreme wickedness, just as in the Amadis or the Palmerin. It is a very entangled81 book, and is not made clearer by the fact that one of the heroes, who is disguised as an amazon, figures alternately as “he” and as “she.” Yet Sidney does achieve the great end of the story-teller, which is to keep alive his reader’s desire to know what is going to happen next. The morality of the book has been very differently judged. It has been called “a vain and amatorious poem,” a “cobweb across the face of nature,” and it has also been described as noble and elevating. Yet it would be a curious morality which could be affected by the doings of personages who are either too seraphic for flesh and blood, or so wicked that the most shameless of mankind would resent being compared to them.
Sidney’s style.
The “vanity” of the book lies in the wordy amatoriousness of its style. We have perhaps pushed the practice of accounting82 for all fashions in literature by imitation too far. It is quite as possible to explain Lyly without Guevara as it would be to account for Góngora without Lyly. Given the desire to write in a fine peculiar form, and the adoption83 of some trick with words follows naturally, while the number of tricks which can be played is not indefinite. Yet it is at least as likely that Sir Philip Sidney was set on his peculiar form of affectation[271] by the Libros de Caballerías, published from thirty to forty years earlier, and certainly known to him. Such sentences as these send us back at once to Feliciano de Silva: “Most beloved lady, the incomparable excellences84 of yourself, waited on by the greatness of your estate, and the importance of the thing whereon my life consisteth, doth require both many ceremonies before the beginning and many circumstances in the uttering of my speech, both bold and fearful.” And, “Since no words can carry with them the life of the inward feeling, I desire that my desire may be weighed in the balances of honour, and let Virtue hold them; for if the highest love in no base person may aspire85 to grace, then may I hope your beauty will not be without pity.” Turn to the first chapter of Shelton’s Don Quixote, and you meet with those “intricate sentences” from Feliciano: “The reason of the unreasonableness86 which against my reason is wrought87, doth so weaken my reason as with all reason I doe justly complaine on your beauty.” And, “The High Heavens which with your divinity doe fortifie you divinely with the starres, and make you deserveresse of the deserts that your greatnesse deserves,” &c.[81]
[272]
We must not push the comparison too far. Sidney had qualities of imagination which raised him far above the Spaniard, and he never rings the changes on the same word so fatuously88 as Feliciano and other later authors of Libros de Caballerías. Yet the juggle on the two forces of the word “desire” is quite in the Spanish taste. The immediate89 success of Don Quixote in England may be explained not only by the permanent merits of Cervantes’ romance, but by the fact that we had our examples of the literary affectation which he attacked. The practice of labouring the expression of sentiment, of repeating, qualifying, and counterbalancing, would inevitably90 lead to long straggling sentences, while it was also a direct invitation to the frigid91 conceits92 in which Sidney abounds93.
Short Stories.
Stories of a kind, translations from or adaptations of the Italians, and notably94 Bandello, with imitations of Euphues and the Pastorals, were common in Elizabethan literature. But, perhaps because it suffered from the overpowering rivalry95 of poetry and the stage, the prose tale is rarely among the good things of the time. Greene, Lodge96, and Breton[82] are interesting to the student, but it cannot be said, with any measure of accuracy, that they have a place in the history of the English novel. They were part of the literary production of their time, but were mostly imitation, and were too completely forgotten, and too soon, to produce any effect. An exceptional interest attaches to Nash’s Unfortunate Traveller, to[273] which attention has again been attracted of late. It is curious that a story which has considerable intrinsic force should have put the model of the Novela de Pícaros before English readers five years earlier than the publication of Guzman de Alfarache in Spain, and that it should have been so completely forgotten that when this model was again introduced among us by Defoe, his inspiration came from Le Sage34.[83]
Nash’s Unfortunate Traveller.
Thomas Nash (1567-1601), who was chiefly known as a pamphleteer, published The Unfortunate Traveller in 1594. It is difficult to read, at any rate the earlier parts of the story, and we doubt that the author had seen, if not the original of the Lazarillo de Tormes, then at any rate the French version of Jean Saugrain, published in 1561. If his work is quite independent, then we have a very remarkable97 instance of exact similarity in the method and spirit of two writers separated from one another in race and by an interval98 of nearly half a century, during which the first had enjoyed a wide popularity. This is difficult to believe. Nothing can be more like Lazarillo’s doings than the tricks which Nash’s hero, Jack99 Wilton, plays on the old cider-selling lord and the captain. It would seem, however, that the time had not come when the picaresque method was to be really congenial to Englishmen. Nash wanders away from it when he introduces the story of Surrey and[274] the Fair Geraldine. Yet he comes back to it with the hero’s love-affairs with Diamante, the wife of a Venetian, whom he meets in prison at Venice. He keeps to it very close when Wilton runs away with his “courtezan,” and gives himself out to be the Earl of Surrey. From the time the hero and Diamante reach Rome the picaresque tone disappears, and Nash drops into familiar Elizabethan “blood and thunder.” With the inconsequence of his time he gives at the end a defiant100 last dying speech and confession101 of an Italian malefactor102, who bears the English name of Cutwolf. Perhaps a certain want of finish, and an air there is about it of being hasty work done to make a little money, injured its effect. Yet The Unfortunate Traveller did show Englishmen a way they were to follow in the future, and it came before the Guzman de Alfarache.
Nash and the pamphleteers.
Thomas Nash was himself perhaps intrinsically the most able, and certainly not the least typical, member of a whole class of Elizabethan men of letters. He was born at Lowestoft, “a son of the manse,” in 1567, and was educated at St John’s, Cambridge. It has been supposed on the strength of some passages in his writings that he travelled abroad in his youth, though he does not write in his Unfortunate Traveller like a man who had seen Venice and Rome. He was settled in London by 1588, and lived the very necessitous life of a man of letters who depended wholly on his pen, till his early death in 1601. It was the misfortune of Nash and of many of his contemporaries that they were born too soon[275] for the magazine or newspaper. His work consists mainly of matter written to please prevailing103 tastes of the time. Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, a long, wordy, and decidedly pretentious104 collection of preachment, and denunciation of the sins of London, his violent quarrel with Gabriel Harvey, or rather with the whole Harvey family, which was rolled out in pamphlets for the amusement of the world, his collection of ghost stories, The Terrors of the Night, and what he called Toys for Gentlemen, which are lost, and into the nature of which it is perhaps better not to inquire, were journalism105 before its time. His Have with you to Saffron Walden, a piece of vigorous literary horseplay at the expense of Gabriel Harvey, is an excellent pamphlet of its kind—in the kind of Mr Pott and Mr Slurk; while his burlesque106 almanac, called A wonderful strange and miraculous107 Astronomical108 Prognostication, though undoubtedly109 suggested by Rabelais, and therefore not quite original, is a piece of solemn fun worthy110 of the irony111 and the good sense of Swift. Nash had ideas of style which sometimes led him into involved pomposity112, but which also supplied him with an effective, though blackguard, controversial manner. Nobody was a greater master of loud-mouthed bragging113, of the fashion of telling an opponent over pages of repetition of the dreadful things you are going to do with him. Consciously, or unconsciously, the Elizabethans were great believers in the maxim114 that if you throw mud enough some will stick, and it was one of the signs of their youth and primitive115 simplicity116 of nature that when[276] they were angry they gave way to the instinct which leads men to scream vituperation and curses, with no regard to their application to the subject. To call a very eminent117 man on his trial for treason—and on the most flimsy evidence too—“a spider of hell” would now be thought not less silly than ignoble118. But that is what Coke called Raleigh, and it is a very fair specimen119 of Elizabethan satirical controversy. Around Nash was a whole class of men engaged in the same work of writing little stories—pastoral or euphuistic—and pamphlets moral, satirical, political, which were often in verse. When they dealt with the low life of London, as in the case of Dekker (1570?-1641?), they possess a certain value as illustrations of contemporary manners. It is curious, when their bulk and their popularity are considered, that no London printer thought of bringing out a miscellany of them at regular intervals120. He would have found abundant matter ready to his hand, and the magazine, if not the newspaper, would have been founded at once.
Martin Marprelate.
One section of the pamphlet literature of the time possesses an enduring interest, if not for its intrinsic value, though that is not inconsiderable, then for historical reasons. This was the famous Martin Marprelate controversy, which was not the first example of an appeal to the people by the press on religious and political questions, for that had been done on the Continent by the Huguenots, but was the earliest effective instance among us. It grew out of the conflict between the Church, which[277] was fighting for uniformity with the hearty121 support of the queen—at least from the day on which she found her power sufficiently122 established to allow her to disregard the Calvinist princes of the Continent—and a body of Englishmen who were desirous to adopt the Calvinist Presbyterian model.[84] According to our view the question was one to be argued peacefully, and those who could not believe the same things ought to have agreed to differ. That was not the opinion of any country, or of either side in the sixteenth century. The Puritans were as convinced of the need for uniformity as the Church or the Spanish Inquisition, and would have enforced it with no sparing hand if they had had the power. They complained quite as bitterly of the toleration which they alleged124 was shown to the Papists (who for their part cried out loudly of persecution125), as of the severities exercised on themselves. As the power was with the bishops127, those who would not conform were expelled from the universities and from their livings. The persecution to which they were subjected was enough to exasperate128, but not to crush, and the embittered129 Puritans cast about for a weapon to use against their opponents. The pamphlet lay ready to their hand.[85]
[278]
Origin of the Marprelate Tracts.
The chief dates in the controversy were these. In 1587 Dr John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury, and afterwards Bishop126 of Oxford130, published A Defence of the Government established in the Church of England for Ecclesiastical Matters, in answer to the Puritan controversialists Cartwright and Travers—a very long, well-meant, and learned, but lumbering131 book. Just at this time the Act of Uniformity was pressing heavily on the Puritans. There were two who were especially aggrieved,—John Udall, who had been expelled from his pulpit at Kingston because, as his friends alleged, he had denounced a local money-lender from whom the archdeacon of the diocese wanted to borrow ￡100; and John Penry, an able, honest, but headlong Welshman. In or about March 1587 Penry published at Oxford a tract1 with a long-winded title, which is called for short The Equity132 of a Humble133 Supplication134. It was an address to Parliament representing the undeniably neglected state of the Welsh parishes. Unfortunately for Penry, it contained one passage which, with no more unfairness than was usual in State prosecutions135, whether conducted for the king or the Long Parliament, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, might be represented to be treasonable. It insinuated136 plainly that the queen consented to leave Wales in religious ignorance and immorality137. The press was then under censorship. Only two printers were allowed out of London—one at Oxford, another at Cambridge. In London the number was limited. No press could be held except by a member of[279] the Stationers’ Company, and any one could be confiscated139 by the Warden140, over whom the Bishop of London had general powers of control as censor138. Penry’s treatise was suppressed, and he was in great peril141.
Here then were two men, both angry, both able, both accustomed to appeal directly to ignorant audiences with whom it was necessary to make things clear. Both, too, were bold men, and honest in the sense that they were ready to risk their lives for their cause. It would have been strange if they had not seized on the pamphlet, as their one remaining weapon against the bishops. The Diotrephes. Udall began by publishing, in April 1588, his dialogue commonly called Diotrephes.[86] The choice of the name was not the worst stroke of satire142 in the controversy. Diotrephes was that person mentioned in the ninth verse of the Third Epistle of St John “who loveth to have the pre-eminence” and who “receiveth us not.” It was a great belief among the Puritans that no minister should have authority over another, and that the bishops who had “pre-eminence” were “antichrists” and “petty popes.” The dialogue tells how a bishop, a papist, a money-lender, and an innkeeper were all rebuked143 by Paul, a preacher. The usurer alone shows signs of compunction, while the bishop goes off thirsting for the blood of the[280] saints, with the hearty approval of the papist, and of the tavern-keeper, who explains that he lives by the vices of his neighbours, and is like to be ruined by the preaching of such men as Paul. This pamphlet was printed by John Waldegrave, a Puritan printer in London, who was deprived of his licence in consequence. His press was broken up, but he contrived144 to conceal145 a fount of type. A printing-press was smuggled146 in by Penry, and a campaign of unlicensed pamphlets was begun.
Course of the controversy.
The details are obscure. The names of the authors can only be guessed at. The controversy lasted from the end of 1588 to the end of 1590. At first the Puritans swept all before them. They had many friends at Court, where indeed their doctrine that the bishops’ lands should be taken and given to gentlemen who could serve the queen was not likely “to want for favourable147 or attentive148 hearers.” Some country gentlemen gave them help—notably Sir R. Knightley of Fawsley, in Northamptonshire (always a Puritan county), and Job Throckmorton, who appears to have been what we should now call a bitter anti-clerical. The press was concealed149 by them in different parts of the country till it was captured by the Earl of Derby. Penry was probably the leader of the fight on the Puritan side. It began by the publication of Martin Marprelate’s Epistle directed against Dr John Bridges, in November 1588. This drew a grave Admonition to the People of England from Dr Thomas Cooper, Bishop of Winchester, in or about January 1589. Martin followed[281] up his attack on Dr Bridges by the Epitome150, printed before the Epistle, but not issued till February of 1589. Then he turned on the Bishop of Winchester in Hay any Work for Cooper.[87]
The success of those pamphlets was great. A well-known story tells how when order was issued that they were not to be read, the Earl of Oxford pulled one of them out of his pocket, and presented it to the queen. Solemn “admonitions” were found to be too awkward in such a conflict, and counter-pamphleteers were called in on the bishops’ side. This part of the controversy is no less obscure than the other. It has been guessed that Lyly and Nash struck in for the bishops. Both have been credited with the authorship of a Pappe with a Hatchet151 and An Almond for a Parrot, which appeared respectively at the end of 1589 and the beginning of 1590. They are now generally attributed to Lyly. Then third parties struck in and denounced both houses, or endeavoured[282] to hush152 the clamour, by such appeals as Plain Perceval the Peace-Maker of England.
Although they naturally fell into neglect so soon as the occasion had passed, the Martin Marprelate pamphlets are of great importance in the history of English literature. The euphuistic, pastoral, and other tales of the time served a mere fashion of the day, and are forgettable as well as forgotten. But when Martin Marprelate published his unlicensed Epistle he set an example which has been excellently well followed. His pamphlet stands at the head of the long list which includes the Areopagitica, the Anatomy of an Equivalent, the Public Spirit of the Whigs, the Shortest Way with the Dissenters153, the Letters of Junius, the Regicide Peace, and it is not absurd to say the Reflections on the Revolution in France, which is a very long, great, and eloquent154 pamphlet, but a pamphlet still. The Epistle and its immediate successors were not unworthy to be the beginners of so vital a part of English literature.
“Si nous avions l’ambition d’être complet, et si c’était l’être que de tout155 dire,” it would be necessary to examine all the pamphlets in detail. But many are practically inaccessible156, and there is so much repetition among them that they can be adequately judged by selected examples. The vital examples are those which set the model. On the Puritan side there are four,—the Diotrephes, which, though strictly157 speaking antecedent to Martin, gave tone and marked the lines, the Epistle, the Epitome, and the Hay any Work for Cooper. The Pappe with a Hatchet and An[283] Almond for a Parrot may stand as examples of the anti-Martinist pamphlets. The peacemakers were of less account. The proposition that there is a great deal to be said on both sides, and the appeal “Why cannot you be reasonable?” may be full of good sense, but they seldom inspire men to words or deeds of a decisive character. Looking at the leading things on either side, one sees that they have one feature in common. They are extremely unfair. But there is a great difference in their way of being unjust, and on that depends their literary value. The distinction is all to the honour of the Puritan pamphlets. Diotrephes shows both the doctrine and the spirit of the writers. They started by laying down the law to the effect that whoever exercises pre-eminence over his brethren in the ministry158 is an “antichrist” and a “petty pope,” and that no church office not explicitly159 mentioned in the New Testament160 is Christian161. Therefore they endeavoured to discredit162 the bishops by showing that they habitually163 did such acts as an antichrist and petty pope might be expected to do. We need not stop to argue that this was unjust. Of course it was, but from the literary point of view the interesting question is, How was the injustice164 worded? The Martin Marprelate men had a firm grip of the pamphlet style. The ridicule165 they poured on the long-winded sentences of Dr Bridges and Bishop Cooper shows that they were perfectly166 well aware of the advantages of a simple direct manner. Their own sentences are brief, and stab with a rapid alert movement. Their abuse is furious, but it is seldom[284] mere scream. “Sodden-headed ass” is bad language, but if it is ever to be pardonable, it is when you have caught your adversary167 reasoning badly, and this the Martinists at least tried to do. It was indecent to call the Bishop of Winchester “Mistress Cooper’s husband.” It is a foul168 hit to remind your opponent that his wife is a profligate169 termagant, but more ingenuity170 is needed to do that, by naming what it would have been more fair to pass in silence, than merely to bawl171 the slang name for the husband of an unfaithful wife, and apply it to a whole class of men at large. And Martin had intelligence enough to understand that a show of fairness can be effective. He could bring himself to allow that if John of Canterbury (Dr Whitgift) did ever marry, he would no doubt choose a Christian woman.
When we turn to the anti-Martinist pamphlets we find the same unfairness of spirit, with little and often none of the cleverness and the ingenious form. If Lyly wrote the Pappe with a Hatchet, he was in a better place when he was in Euphues his lonely cave in Silexedra. The elegance172, real of its artificial kind, is gone, and in place of it we get a loud vaunting howl of abuse. One-half of the qualification of the “slating reviewer” was wanting to the anti-Martinists. They hated the man, but they did not know the subject. The Royalist general who answered Fairfax’s self-righteous boasting of the good discipline of the Parliamentary soldiers by telling him that the Puritan had the sins of the Devil, “which are spiritual pride and rebellion,” struck him harder, and[285] showed a finer wit than all the pamphleteers whom it has been in my power to see. They miss his vulnerable points, they bellow173 bad language and accusations174 of the kind of misconduct from which the Puritan was as free as the universal passions of humanity permitted. The difference between the two may be quite fairly put this way. The worst calumny175 of the Martinists can be quoted, but the anti-Martinists are naught when they are not using language which is nearly as unquotable as any written by the worst scribblers of the Restoration. The least nauseous passages are those in which these defenders176 of the Church gloat over the whips, branding-irons, and mutilating knife of Ball the Hangman. Now Martin rarely goes beyond threatening the bishops with a premunire, and when he does he stops at a “hemp collar.” Its place in literary history. The Martin Marprelate men were fighting in a now obsolete178 cause, in a style which has manifest faults of taste and temper. But they were on the right path, they set the example of pamphlet controversy from which the press was to come in time, and they did it in a way which only needed amending179. The author of the Anatomy of an Equivalent had learnt that when you have proved your opponent to be “a sodden-headed ass,” it is superfluous180 to pelt181 him with the name. Yet he was truly the successor of Martin, while the line of the anti-Martinists ended in Ned Ward46.
Hooker.
It is sometimes said that the Martinists were routed by Lyly and Nash, which is certainly unfair to the Earl of Derby, and not quite just to Ball the Hangman.[286] As far as they were routed by literary weapons, the honour of defeating them is due to a very different hand. The doctrine of the Puritans was confuted in the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker—the greatest masterpiece of Elizabethan prose.[88] Hooker was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, in 1553. His family was poor, and, like many of his contemporaries, he was educated by the kindness of patrons. Dr Jewel, the Bishop of Salisbury, and Edwin Sandys, then Bishop of London, and afterwards Archbishop of York, successively protected him at Oxford. He was tutor to Sandys’ sons. If Isaac Walton was correctly informed, he was somewhat tamely annexed182 by a scheming landlady183 as husband for her daughter. He had to resign his fellowship upon his marriage in 1584, and was appointed to the living of Drayton Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire. In the following year he was appointed Master of the Temple. Here he became widely known by a controversy with the Puritan Walter Travers, conducted on both sides with more moderation than was usual in those times. After holding the Mastership for seven years, he resigned it for a living in Wiltshire. He died at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, in 1600.
The Ecclesiastical Polity.
In the chapter of his Constitutional History which deals with Elizabeth’s laws against the Non-Conformists, Mr Hallam has written: “But while these scenes of pride and persecution on one hand, and of sectarian insolence184 on the other, were deforming185 the bosom186 of the English Church, she found a defender177 of[287] her institutions in one who mingled187 in these vulgar controversies188 like a knight of romance among caitiff brawlers, with arms of finer temper and worthy to be proved in a nobler field.” If this sentence is to be understood to mean—as from the context it perhaps must—that Hooker mingled in the Martin Marprelate conflict, it is inaccurate189. He answered Cartwright and Travers, as Dr Bridges had done, and whatever may be said of these men it would be silly to call them caitiff brawlers, while it would be difficult to say what nobler field Hooker could have found for his arms than that in which he justified190 the faith and religious practices of Englishmen. Yet Mr Hallam has fairly singled out the predominant characteristic of Hooker. There is something knightly about him, something of the chivalry of Sir Galahad. He could strike with telling force, as he does in the one passage of fine scorn devoted191 to the jeering192 Puritan pamphlets—beside which all the scolding of their proper opponents is mere brutal64 noise. Yet what prevails with him so completely that the exceptions are hardly noticeable is the moderation which has earned him his name of “Judicious.” It is not the easy moderation of one who does not care much, but of a man who was very convinced, very earnest, and also very good. The Ecclesiastical Polity is not chiefly valuable as a piece of reasoning. It has for one thing not reached us complete. The first four books, which must have been begun while he was at the Temple, were published in 1594. The long fifth book appeared in 1597. The[288] three, which make up the total number of eight, were left unfinished at his death, and passed into careless, if not unfaithful, hands. But the five undoubted books were enough to do Hooker’s work for the Church of England, and they did not do it by presenting his readers with such a closely reasoned and compact system as they might have found in the Institutions of Calvin. Englishmen have never cared much for consistency193 of system. It was enough for them that Hooker justified usages, ceremonies, and forms of Church government to which they were accustomed, against the “Disciplinarians” who condemned194 them for wanting the express authority of the New Testament, by proving that they had prevailed among pious195 men of former times, were in themselves innocent, and could therefore be accepted by sincere Christians196 as convenient, pious, and of good example, even if they had no “divine right,” when they were imposed by authority. In substance this was no new doctrine. Her Majesty197 in Council had been saying as much for years, and so had Whitgift and Bridges, and all the defenders of the Establishment. But what they did by dry injunction or laboured scholastic198 argument, Hooker did by persuasion199, by pathos200, and by noble rhetoric201. The criticism that he sometimes gives eloquence202 where he ought to give argument, does not go far when the purpose of his book is allowed for. It was not by logic8 that God elected to save His Church in former centuries, nor yet in the sixteenth. In Hooker’s case, as fully123 as in the case of any poet, literature vindicated[289] itself. The beauty of the style, always essentially203 pure English in spite of an occasional Latin turn of the sentence, is the great merit of the Ecclesiastical Polity. The famous eloquent passages arise naturally because they always correspond to the greater pathos, or sanctity, or the deeper passion of that part of his subject which he is handling at the moment. The Englishman stood between the Calvinist on the one hand and the Roman Catholic on the other, both appealing to him on religious grounds. There was a real danger that his own Church would find nothing to tell him except that decency204 was decent, that he had better not trouble himself about debatable matters he would never understand, and that he must obey the Queen. If this was all it could find to say, Englishmen who were concerned about religion—the majority of thinking men, whether ignorant or learned—would assuredly have gone either to Geneva or to Rome, while the unthinking mass alone would have remained to the Church. In that case it would have gone down for ever in the Civil War. From that fate it was saved by Hooker.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
tract
|
|
| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
tracts
|
|
| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
controversy
|
|
| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
reign
|
|
| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
renaissance
|
|
| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
meritorious
|
|
| adj.值得赞赏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
chronological
|
|
| adj.按年月顺序排列的，年代学的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
logic
|
|
| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
followers
|
|
| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
utterances
|
|
| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
juggle
|
|
| v.变戏法，纂改，欺骗，同时做；n.玩杂耍，纂改，花招 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
treatise
|
|
| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
treatises
|
|
| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
discourse
|
|
| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
sane
|
|
| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
boisterous
|
|
| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
swelling
|
|
| n.肿胀 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
vehement
|
|
| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
bombast
|
|
| n.高调，夸大之辞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
unaware
|
|
| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
divers
|
|
| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
destitute
|
|
| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
prophesying
|
|
| v.预告，预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
salvation
|
|
| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
vices
|
|
| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
noted
|
|
| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
margin
|
|
| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
disastrous
|
|
| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
sage
|
|
| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
slain
|
|
| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
distress
|
|
| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
artillery
|
|
| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
resolute
|
|
| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
thereby
|
|
| adv.因此，从而 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
valiant
|
|
| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
repulsed
|
|
| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
intelligible
|
|
| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
expound
|
|
| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
doctrine
|
|
| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
ward
|
|
| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
affected
|
|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
anatomy
|
|
| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
antitheses
|
|
| n.对照，对立的，对比法；对立( antithesis的名词复数 )；对立面；对照；对偶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
naught
|
|
| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
virtuous
|
|
| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
platitude
|
|
| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
philandering
|
|
| v.调戏，玩弄女性( philander的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
remains
|
|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
cypress
|
|
| n.柏树 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
folly
|
|
| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
deference
|
|
| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
turbid
|
|
| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
lyric
|
|
| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
vacuity
|
|
| n.(想象力等)贫乏，无聊，空白 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
liking
|
|
| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
herd
|
|
| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
profligacy
|
|
| n.放荡，不检点，肆意挥霍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
brutal
|
|
| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
brutality
|
|
| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
cardinal
|
|
| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
virtues
|
|
| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
chivalry
|
|
| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
pedantry
|
|
| n.迂腐，卖弄学问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
insignificant
|
|
| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
admiration
|
|
| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
snobbery
|
|
| n. 充绅士气派, 俗不可耐的性格 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
stilted
|
|
| adj.虚饰的；夸张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
coterie
|
|
| n.(有共同兴趣的)小团体，小圈子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
patronage
|
|
| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
knight
|
|
| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
knightly
|
|
| adj. 骑士般的 adv. 骑士般地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
rout
|
|
| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
plebeians
|
|
| n.平民( plebeian的名词复数 )；庶民；平民百姓；平庸粗俗的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
80
knights
|
|
| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
entangled
|
|
| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
accounting
|
|
| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
adoption
|
|
| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
excellences
|
|
| n.卓越( excellence的名词复数 )；（只用于所修饰的名词后）杰出的；卓越的；出类拔萃的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
aspire
|
|
| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
unreasonableness
|
|
| 无理性； 横逆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
wrought
|
|
| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
fatuously
|
|
| adv.愚昧地，昏庸地，蠢地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
inevitably
|
|
| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
frigid
|
|
| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
conceits
|
|
| 高傲( conceit的名词复数 )； 自以为； 巧妙的词语； 别出心裁的比喻 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
abounds
|
|
| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
notably
|
|
| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
rivalry
|
|
| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
lodge
|
|
| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
interval
|
|
| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
jack
|
|
| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
defiant
|
|
| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
confession
|
|
| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
malefactor
|
|
| n.罪犯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
prevailing
|
|
| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
pretentious
|
|
| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
journalism
|
|
| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
burlesque
|
|
| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
miraculous
|
|
| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
astronomical
|
|
| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
undoubtedly
|
|
| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
worthy
|
|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
irony
|
|
| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
pomposity
|
|
| n.浮华；虚夸；炫耀；自负 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
bragging
|
|
| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的现在分词 )；大话 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
maxim
|
|
| n.格言，箴言 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
simplicity
|
|
| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
eminent
|
|
| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
ignoble
|
|
| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
specimen
|
|
| n.样本，标本 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
intervals
|
|
| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
hearty
|
|
| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
sufficiently
|
|
| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
fully
|
|
| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
alleged
|
|
| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
persecution
|
|
| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
bishop
|
|
| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
bishops
|
|
| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
exasperate
|
|
| v.激怒，使（疾病）加剧，使恶化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
embittered
|
|
| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
Oxford
|
|
| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
lumbering
|
|
| n.采伐林木 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
equity
|
|
| n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
humble
|
|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
supplication
|
|
| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
prosecutions
|
|
| 起诉( prosecution的名词复数 )； 原告； 实施； 从事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
insinuated
|
|
| v.暗示( insinuate的过去式和过去分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
immorality
|
|
| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
censor
|
|
| n./vt.审查，审查员；删改 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
confiscated
|
|
| 没收，充公( confiscate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
warden
|
|
| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
peril
|
|
| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
satire
|
|
| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
rebuked
|
|
| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
contrived
|
|
| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
conceal
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
smuggled
|
|
| 水货 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
favourable
|
|
| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
attentive
|
|
| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
concealed
|
|
| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
epitome
|
|
| n.典型，梗概 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
hatchet
|
|
| n.短柄小斧；v.扼杀 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
hush
|
|
| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
dissenters
|
|
| n.持异议者，持不同意见者( dissenter的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
eloquent
|
|
| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
tout
|
|
| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
inaccessible
|
|
| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
157
strictly
|
|
| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
158
ministry
|
|
| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
159
explicitly
|
|
| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
160
testament
|
|
| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
161
Christian
|
|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
162
discredit
|
|
| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
163
habitually
|
|
| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
164
injustice
|
|
| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
165
ridicule
|
|
| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
166
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
167
adversary
|
|
| adj.敌手，对手 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
168
foul
|
|
| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
169
profligate
|
|
| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
170
ingenuity
|
|
| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
171
bawl
|
|
| v.大喊大叫，大声地喊，咆哮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
172
elegance
|
|
| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
173
bellow
|
|
| v.吼叫，怒吼；大声发出，大声喝道 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
174
accusations
|
|
| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
175
calumny
|
|
| n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
176
defenders
|
|
| n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
177
defender
|
|
| n.保卫者，拥护者，辩护人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
178
obsolete
|
|
| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
179
amending
|
|
| 改良，修改，修订( amend的现在分词 )； 改良，修改，修订( amend的第三人称单数 )( amends的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
180
superfluous
|
|
| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
181
pelt
|
|
| v.投掷，剥皮，抨击，开火 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
182
annexed
|
|
| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
183
landlady
|
|
| n.女房东，女地主 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
184
insolence
|
|
| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
185
deforming
|
|
| 使变形，使残废，丑化( deform的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
186
bosom
|
|
| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
187
mingled
|
|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
188
controversies
|
|
| 争论 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
189
inaccurate
|
|
| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
190
justified
|
|
| a.正当的，有理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
191
devoted
|
|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
192
jeering
|
|
| adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
193
consistency
|
|
| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
194
condemned
|
|
| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
195
pious
|
|
| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
196
Christians
|
|
| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
197
majesty
|
|
| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
198
scholastic
|
|
| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
199
persuasion
|
|
| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
200
pathos
|
|
| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
201
rhetoric
|
|
| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
202
eloquence
|
|
| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
203
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
204
decency
|
|
| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |