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.- 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 

 rh3thm ; 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, l)ut 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 occup3'ing 551 pages out of 650, 388 of these being devoted 

 to a metrical paraphrase of the Psalms. From the da3's of Wyatt 

 and Surre\' 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 b}^ the devout and by the pro- 

 fligate. A complete list of English writers who from 1500 to 1700 

 made metrical versions of an}- 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 Epitaph on A. V. dieing Yoimge might be diited. were Ave sure 

 that V. stands for Vere. 



* As Markhani |)nl)li.she(l this in Miscellanies of Die Philohiblon Society, 

 vol. 12, 18B8-9, I liave not reprinted it. 



^ See tal)le of contents of the ]\IS. on page 249. \\\\\\ ili(> exception of 

 the Psalms, 1 have a royy of (he whole ]\IS. It i.-^ ;it the disposal of 

 any one interested in it. 



