" Still, these fanatics could scarcely have dreamed
that power would ever be given them to carry their peculiar theories
into practice, and to govern a nation as though it were composed
entirely of precisians and bigots. For two generations--from the
Reformation to the Civil War--the Puritans had been the butt of the
satirical, the jest of the wits--ridiculed and laughed at on all
sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the
laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid ungainly zealots
... rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down
under their feet the whole crowd of mockers."
Yet from the first the Puritans had not neglected the pen as a weapon
of offence. In 1579 Stephen Gosson published his curious pamphlet
bearing the lengthy title of "The Schoole of Abuse, containing a
pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Jesters, and such like
Catterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to
their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by
Profane Writers, natural reason, and common experience: A Discourse
as pleasant for gentlemen that favour learning as profitable for all
that will follow virtue.
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