Religion was mocked at as a cloak for
hypocrisy, self-restraint was thrown aside as an obstacle to enjoyment.
It was thought that emancipation from Puritan tyranny could not be
attained more effectually than by a life of open licentiousness; by
gambling and drunkenness. Such, under the Restoration, were the
occupations most attractive to the gentlemen of fashion. Buckingham,
Rochester, and the troop of courtiers who looked to them for an
example, spent their lives in sinking into an ever deeper depravity.
Their thoughts and mouths were never clean. The verses they wrote are
too foul to transcribe as an illustration of the taste of their
composers. The orgies in which they indulged were not scenes of gaiety,
in which buoyant spirits and lively wit might excuse excess, but were
serious, bestial, and premeditated. The dealings of these men with the
female sex were but a succession of low intrigues, which destroyed all
sentiment and left nothing but disgust behind them. We hear a great
deal about "love" in the literature of the time, but it is the same
kind of love that might be found among a herd of cattle. It would be
difficult to mention any man about the court of Charles II who could
have appreciated the pure and enduring passion which in the century
before had breathed through the noble lines of Spenser's
"Epithalamion," and in the century that followed inspired "John
Anderson, my jo' John.
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