literature of most sorts was now to be perhaps more nearly limited than
ever before.

The revolt of the nation was directed partly against the irresponsible
injustice of the Puritan military government but largely also against the
excessive moral severity of the whole Puritan regime. Accordingly a large
part of the nation, but particularly the Court, now plunged into an orgy of
self-indulgence in which moral restraints almost ceased to be regarded. The
new king and his nobles had not only been led by years of proscription and
exile to hate on principle everything that bore the name of Puritan, but
had spent their exile at the French Court, where utterly cynical and
selfish pursuit of pleasure and licentiousness of conduct were merely
masked by conventionally polished manners. The upshot was that the quarter
century of the renewed Stuart rule was in almost all respects the most
disgraceful period of English history and life. In everything, so far as
possible, the restored Cavaliers turned their backs on their immediate
predecessors. The Puritans, in particular, had inherited the enthusiasm
which had largely made the greatness of the Elizabethan period but had in
great measure shifted it into the channel of their religion. Hence to the
Restoration courtiers enthusiasm and outspoken emotion seemed marks of
hypocrisy and barbarism. In opposition to such tendencies they aimed to
realize the ideal of the man of the world, sophisticated, skeptical,
subjecting everything to the scrutiny of the reason, and above all,
well-bred. Well-bred, that is, according to the artificial social standards
of a selfish aristocratic class; for the actual manners of the courtiers,
as of such persons at all times, were in many respects disgustingly crude.
In religion most of them professed adherence to the English Church (some to
the Catholic), but it was a conventional adherence to an institution of the
State and a badge of party allegiance, not a matter of spiritual conviction
or of any really deep feeling. The Puritans, since they refused to return