28 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOE. 



EXERCISE 35. 



1. Aqui ee habla el Frances. 2. Llamad, y se os abura. 3. Se 

 dobla el clamor. 4. <; Se usan plumas de oro ? 5. Las botellas se 

 llenaran de vino. 6. La casa Be llenara de humo. 7. Se abriran las 

 puertas. 8. Se cumple la profecia. 9. Las casas se quemaron. 10. 

 Se abrio el libro. 11. Este vino se vende a dos pesos la botella. 12. 

 Se continuara la carta. 13. Se abrieron todas las puertas. 



EXERCISE 36. 



1. The father loves his sons. 2. The physician heals the sick. 

 3. We pardon our debtors. 4. God loves those who are good. 5. She 

 fears tha American. 6. The judge pardoned the man who robbed 

 Peter's father. 7. My manservant slew his father. 8. I pardoned all 

 iny debtors. 9. Peter loves me like a brother. 10. We will visit the 

 president to-night. 11. I will reward him who honours me. 



EXERCISE 37. 



1. Honoramos al juez. 2. Este juez no teme a Dios. 3. Yo 

 perdono a mis deudores. 4. Llamaron a los pintores. 5. El medico 

 sanara a muchos euferrnos. 6. Robaron a la muger a quien recom- 

 pensamos. 7. Honrad a vuestros padres. 8. Te amo como a un 

 padre. 9. Las seuoras recompensaran a sus criadas. 



LESSONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. XVI. 



THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMONWEALTH: POETRY. 

 THE period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth produced 

 many poets ; but, excepting always Milton, whom we shall have 

 to treat of separately, they were neither very great individually, 

 nor did they, like the second-rate poets and dramatists of the 

 preceding generation, belong to a great school, writing under 

 the influence of its principles and following its traditions. The 

 period at which we have now arrived produced a class of poets 

 distinguished rather by learning and subtlety than by truth or 

 poetic feeling. To those poets Johnson gave the name of the 

 metaphysical poets. The name is not very happily chosen, but 

 it has been generally adopted by later writers ; and Johnson's 

 description of the characteristics of this class of writers, though 

 a little exaggerated, is, if applied to the more extravagant 

 examples of the class, in the main just : " The metaphysical 

 poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was 

 their whole endeavour ; but, unluckily resolving to show it in 

 rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and 

 very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better 

 than of the ear ; for the modulation was so imperfect that they 

 were only to be found verses by counting the syllables. If the 

 father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry T 

 uiMT)Ti/c^, an imitative art, those writers will, without great 

 wrong, lose the name of poets ; for they cannot be said to have 

 imitated anything. They neither copied nature nor life; 

 neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the opera- 

 tions of intellect. . . . Their thoughts are often new, but 

 seldom natural ; they are not obvious, but neither are they just ; 

 and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, 

 wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry 

 they were ever found. . . . The most heterogeneous ideas 

 are yoked by violence together ; nature and art are ransacked 

 for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions ; their learning 

 instructs, and their subtlety surprises ; but the reader commonly 

 thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he some- 

 times admires, is seldom pleased. . . . From this accounl 

 of their compositions it will be readily inferred that they were 

 not successful in representing or moving the affections. 

 Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic 

 . . Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty coulc 

 have little hope of greatness, for great things cannot have 

 escaped former observation. Their attempts were always 

 analytic ; they broke every image into fragments ; and could no 

 more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particu 

 larities, the prospects of nature or the scenes of life, than h< 

 who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wid< 

 effulgence of a summer noon." 



The origin of this school of poetry in England is tracec 

 back by Johnson to Donne, whom we have already mentionec 

 as a satirist among the poets of the Elizabethan age. The 

 principal representative of the class in the following age wai 

 Cowley. 



Abraham Cowley was born in London in 1618, his parent 

 belonging to the tradesman class. He received his education a 



Vestminster School and at Cambridge. From a very early 

 ,ge he gave proof of extraordinary intellectual vigour and great 

 iterary ability, and laid the foundation of the high reputation 

 vhich he enjoyed among his contemporaries. Throughout the 

 jivil contests and the Commonwealth, Cowley warmly espoused 

 he side of the king, and was for many years employed in 

 esponsible posts at home and abroad by the royal family. 

 After the Restoration he, like many other faithful adherents of 

 royalty, failed to obtain the reward of his devotion ; and he 

 died in retirement and disappointment in 1667. Of poets whose 

 ame while living has been anything like so great as Cowley' s, 

 ihere is probably hardly any whose poems posterity has so com- 

 jletely forgotten as his. He was the author of a great number 

 of short poems upon the most various subjects, and of very 

 various degrees of merit, but all tainted more or less by the 

 vices pointed out by Johnson in the passage we have quoted. 

 The works of Cowley most admired by his contemporaries were 

 lis "Pindaric Odes," of which some are free translations of 

 the odes of Pindar, others original odes composed in a style 

 which was once thought scarcely inferior to Pindar. But to a 

 modern reader it is very difficult to detect their merit. " The 

 Davideis" is an epic poem, intended to have extended to 

 ;welve books, but of which only four were completed, upon the 

 ife of David. It is said to have been written by Cowley when a 

 very young man. There are few poems in the language so 

 wholly wearisome, so destitute of life and interest, and so per- 

 petually offending against every principle of good taste. As a 

 prose writer, Cowley is far more pleasing than as a poet ; his 

 ssays upon various subjects of taste and criticism fully deserve 

 ;he high reputation they have always enjoyed. 



Among the minor poets of that age, there is probably none 

 whose works have retained their popularity to the same degree 

 as those of George Herbert. Where Cowley and even Waller 

 nave one reader, Herbert has hundreds. This lasting popularity 

 ie owes at least as much to the purity and beauty of his life and 

 character, as to his genius. Herbert was born in 1593 ; he was 

 educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and resided for some 

 years at the University, where he filled the office of public 

 orator, and was highly distinguished for learning and eloquence. 

 But it was as a country clergyman, in the rectory of Bemerton, 

 in Wilts, that he chiefly displayed those virtues which have 

 secured him to so high a degree the reverence of successive 

 generations of English churchmen. His poems are short 

 religious pieces, and the principal series of them is one pub- 

 lished after his death, under the title of " The Temple." 

 They partake strongly of the p-revailing faults of the day, 

 affected conceits, and misplaced ingenuity. But the spirit of 

 profound piety, of ardent but chastened religious emotion 

 which breathes through these poems, has given them a vitality 

 which all their faults has not been able to destroy. Herbert 

 died in 1633. 



Somewhat similar in character to the poetry of Herbert is 

 that of Richard Crashaw, a poet born a few years later than 

 Herbert. Crashaw was educated at Oxford, but he soon 

 became a Roman Catholic, and died at an early age an eccle- 

 siastic in the Roman Catholic Church. 



Francis Quarles is one of the writers most completely ruined 

 by the prevailing taste of his day ; his writings are to modern 

 readers almost unbearable, from their affectation and want of 

 simplicity. A series of " Divine Emblems " is the best known 

 of his works. 



A poet of far superior quality to Quarles was George Wither. 

 He was born towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, and 

 lived till several years after the Restoration. In all the con- 

 tests of the stormy period in which his lot was cast Wither took 

 an active part, and experienced the alternations of success and 

 persecution which befell all such men. He was a staunch Puri- 

 tan, and fought in the parliamentary army. As a poet, Wither 

 possessed many qualities of a very high order. When he writes 

 at his best, his language is admirably terse and vigorous, his 

 verse very melodious, and his observation both of external 

 nature and of human nature close and delicate. But a great 

 part of his poems are spoiled by the prevailing faults of his day, 

 puerile conceits and ingenious extravagances both of thought 

 and expression. There are some or his poems, however, which 

 have wholly escaped the taint. What can be more simple 

 and manly than the well-known song, from which space allows 

 us to quote only two stanzas : 



