Change in Foreign Influence.--Of all foreign influences from the beginning of the Renaissance to the Restoration, the literature of Italy had been the most important. French influence now gained the ascendancy.
There were several reasons for this change. (1) France under the great Louis XIV. was increasing her political importance. (2) She now had among her writers men who were by force of genius fitted to exert wide influence. Among such, we may instance Molière (1622-1673), who stands next to Shakespeare in dramatic power. (3) Charles II. and many Cavaliers had passed the time of their exile in France. They became familiar with French literature, and when they returned to England in 1660, their taste had already been influenced by French models.
Change in the Subject Matter of Literature.--The Elizabethan age impartially held the mirror up to every type of human emotion. The writers of the Restoration and of the first half of the eighteenth century, as a class, avoided any subject that demanded a portrayal of deep and noble feeling. In this age, we catch no glimpse of a Lady Macbeth in the grasp of remorse or of a Lear bending over a dead Cordelia.
The popular subjects were those which appealed to cold intellect; and these were, for the most part, satirical, didactic, and argumentative. The two greatest poets of the period, John Dryden and his successor, Alexander Pope, usually chose such subjects. John Locke (1632-1704), a great prose writer of this age, shows in the very title of his most famous work, _Of the Conduct of the Understanding_, what he preferred to discuss. That book opens with the statement, "The last resort a man has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding." This declaration, which is not strictly true, embodies a pronounced tendency of the age, which could not understand that the world of feeling is no less real than that of the understanding.
One good result of the ascendancy of the intellect was seen in scientific investigation. The Royal Society was founded in 1662 to study natural phenomena and to penetrate into the hidden mysteries of philosophy and life.
The Advance of Prose.--In each preceding age, the masterpieces were poetry; but before the middle of the eighteenth century we find the prose far surpassing the poetry. Dryden, almost immediately after the Restoration, shows noteworthy advance in modern prose style. He avoids a Latinized inversion, such as the following, with which Milton begins the second sentence of his _Areopagitica_ (1644):--