The Poems of Lord Fairfax. 243 
(1660).! As these poems are written down in this order, it will be 
seen that their position gives no clue to the time of their compo- 
sition, indeed, the very last poem in the manuscript is an eclogue, 
Hermes and Lycaon, by Edward Fairfax, who died in 1635.2 If we 
refer Fairfax’s translations from ‘“ good old Mantuan” to his student 
days, the poems certainly cover a period of forty years. 
A perusal of the manuscript shows us at once that Fairfax is not a 
poet, but rather a man of poetic tastes, an admirer of verse. We have, 
then, no discovery of a neglected genius, and there will be no call 
for the Complete Works of Thomas Fairfax. It will occasion no 
surprise, therefore, that we have omitted a considerable amount of 
his poetry.’ It will readily be seen that the chief defect in these 
poems is their poor technique. Fairfax had very little sense of 
rhythm; at times his ear seems absolutely untrained, and, though a 
multitude of corrections in the manuscript show how hard he strugg- 
led to improve his lines, yet his revisions are generally as awkward 
as his first rude draft. Few of his poems have-any metrical charm, 
and when in his Honey Drops or Vulgar Proverbs he seeks to 
become epigrammatical, he lacks both point and finish. His best 
writing is seen in such a poem as David’s Lamentation, or in the 
straightforward couplets of the Christian Warfare; however, it is 
not for his skill as a writer that Fairfax deserves attention, but for 
certain conclusions that may be drawn from the subject-matter of 
his lines. 
Fairfax divided his poetry into religious and secular verse, the 
former occupying 551 pages out of 650, 388 of these being devoted 
to a metrical paraphrase of the Psalms. From the days of Wyatt 
and Surrey in England and Clement Marot in France, to “trans- 
late” the Psalms, or indeed to turn any part of the Scriptures into 
verse, was a pastime indulged in alike by the devout and by the pro- 
figate. A complete list of English writers who from 1500 to 1700 
made metrical versions of any portion of the Bible has never been 
compiled. It would be a surprisingly large one, and, though Fairfax 
was a devout man, he was following a literary fashion as well as 
his own inclination in his paraphrase which offers so little that is 

* The £pitaph on A. V. dieing Younge might be dated, were we sure 
that V. stands for Vere. 
* As Markham published this in A/scellanies of the Philobiblon Society, 
vol. 12, 1868—9, I have not reprinted it. 
* See table of contents of the MS. on page 249. With the exception of 
the Psalms, I have a copy of the whole MS. It is at the disposal of 
any one interested in it. 
