ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



29 



" Hi. ill I, waiting in dei.;ur. 

 Die because a woman'* fair / 

 i 'i MI.) cheeks make pale with care, 



-..i another's rosy are ? 

 B she fairer than the day, 

 Or the flowery meads in May 

 If she be not so to me, 

 "What care I how fair she be ? 



" Groat or good, or kind or fair, 

 I shall ne'er the more despair. 

 If she lore me, this believe, 

 I will die ere she shall grieve. 

 If she slight me when I woo, 

 I can scorn and let her go ; 

 For if she be not for me, 

 What cara I for whom she be P ' 



Robert Herrick was born before the cloao of the sixteenth , 

 aentury, and lived till some years after the Restoration. He 

 *aa by profession a clergyman, and rector of a country pariah; 

 but in taste and sympathies ho was a wit and man of the world. ! 

 While showing strongly the faults of his age sensuousnesa 

 even to indecency, subtlety, and want of simplicity Horrick's 

 poems also show in a peculiar degree the highest excellences of 

 the period. For refinement of sentiment and grace of expression 

 his songs are unsurpassed. 



The peculiar beauties of the minor poetry of this period, 

 though by no means wanting in some of those whom we hare 

 already mentioned, especially in Wither and Herrick, are chiefly 

 to be found in the cavalier poets. These writers are all poets of 

 romance rather than of passion. There is an air of lightness, 

 almost of unreality, about their tenderest expressions ; and they 

 show a sensuousness of tone by no means in harmony with the 

 sterner taste either of their Puritan contemporaries, or of more 

 modern times ; nor are they free from the tendency to morbid 

 subtlety of thought and expression. But their lyrics have a 

 grace, refinement, and delicacy of finish which no other school 

 of English song-writers has ever reached, and which is irre- 

 sistibly attractive. The principal representatives of this class 

 are Suckling and Lovelace. 



Sir John Suckling, who was born early in the reign of James I., 

 and died in the midst of the conflicts of the next reign, was a 

 cavalier, an ardent and devoted royalist. His poems are all 

 short, almost all of them on subjects of love and gallantry. 

 Many of them are marred by an over-sensuous warmth of tone, 

 occasionally amounting to positive indecency ; but the best of 

 them exhibit in a very high degree that delicacy of fancy and 

 neatness of expression which are among the highest graces that 

 such poetry can possess. The following lines from one of his 

 best-known poems that in which, under the guise and in the 

 assumed style of a rustic, he describes a fashionable wedding 

 are a fair specimen of his style : 



" The maid, and hereby hangs a 



tale 

 For such a maid no Whitsun ale 



Could ever yet produce : 

 No grape that's hardly ripe could 

 be [she, 



So round, so plump, so soft as 

 Nor half so full of juice. 



" Her finger was so small, the ring 

 Would not stay ou which they 



did bring, 

 It was too wide a peck. 



And, to say truth (for out it 



must), 

 It looked like the great collar 



(just) 

 About our young colt's neck. 



' Her feet, beneath her petticoat. 

 Like little mice stole in and 



out, 



As if they feared the light. 

 But, oh ! she dances such a way ! 

 No sun upon an Easter day 



Is half so fine a sight." 

 Of all the song-writers of this period, perhaps the first place 

 is due to Sir Richard Lovelace. He lived through the whole of 

 the stormy period which included the Civil War and the Common- 

 wealth. He was a soldier and a zealous loyalist, and fought on 

 the king's side throughout the war ; and in proportion as the 

 king's cause declined the fortunes of Lovelace suffered with it. 

 He was reduced to poverty, was frequently imprisoned, and died 

 at last in extreme distress, just too soon to see the tide of 

 fortune turn, and the triumph of his party in the Restoration. 

 Love and loyalty are his favourite themes, and his songs have 

 an exquisite grace and tenderness. The following poem, " To 

 Althea from Prison," is one of the most beautiful lyrics in our 

 language : 



" When Love, with unconfined 



wings, 



Hovers within my gates, 

 And my divine Althea brings 

 To whisper at the grates ; 

 When I lie tangled in her 



hair, 



And fettered to her eye, 

 The birds that wanton in the 



air 

 Know no such liberty. 



'When flowing cups run swiftly 



round, 



With no allaying Thames, 

 Our careless heads with roses 



crowned, 



Our hearts with loyal flames ; 

 When thirsty grief in wine we 



steep, 

 Wheu healths and draughts 



go free 



Fishes that tipple in the deep 

 Know no such liberty. 



" When, like committed linnets, 1 1 

 With shriller throat shall tine 

 The sweetness, mercy, majesty, 



And glories of my king ; 

 When I shall voice aloud how 



good 



Ho is, bow great should bo, 

 Enlarged winds, that curl the 



flood, 

 Know no such liberty. 



And not less perfect is his little poem, " To Lucasta on Going 

 to the Wars : " 



And with a firmer faith em- 

 brace 



A sword, a horse, a shield. 



' Bton<t walls do cot a prUot 



make, 



Nor iron bars a cafe ; 

 Minds innocent and qjiet take 



That for an hermitage. 

 If I have freedom in my love, 



And in my soul am free. 

 Angels alone, that soar above, 

 Enjoy such liberty." 



"Tell me not, sweet, I am un- 



kind. 



That from the nunnery 

 Of thy chaste breast and quiet 



mind, 

 To war and arms I fly. 



" True a new mistress now I chase, 

 The first foe in the field : 



" Tet this inconstancy is such 



As you too shall adore ; 

 I could not love thee, dear, so 



much. 

 Loved I not honour more." 



To the same class of cavalier poets belongs Cleveland, a poet 

 who, in his own day, enjoyed a higher reputation than either 

 Suckling or Lovelace, though posterity has reversed this judg- 

 ment. His chief powers were as a satirist. 



Two poets in particular, Waller and Denham, are exempted 

 by Johnson from the catalogue of metaphysical poets. They, he 

 says, " sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony 

 of our numbers;" and though, in the case of Waller, most 

 modern critics might hesitate before acquitting him absolutely 

 of the charge intended to be conveyed by the epithet meta- 

 physical, there can be no doubt that both the poets named 

 contributed largely to the improvement of English versification. 



Edmund Waller was born in 1603, and lived till 1687. 

 During this period he filled a prominent place in public 

 affairs. By birth he was a country gentleman, and at an early 

 age he inherited an ample fortune. He entered Parliament 

 early, and his wit and eloquence soon acquired for him a popu- 

 larity which he never lost ; though, by his selfish and nil- 

 scrupulous conduct, he forfeited the respect of all parties. AH 

 a, near relation of Hampden and Cromwell, his family connections 

 were on the side of the Parliament ; but his sympathies, so far 

 as he had any, seem to have been rather with the opposite 

 party. On one occasion he suffered banishment and a pecuniary 

 fine for being party to a foolish and somewhat discreditable plot 

 in favour of the king, and might have incurred a heavier 

 penalty, had he not escaped by a cowardly betrayal of his friends. 

 He was, in fact, an unprincipled and time-serving politician, a 

 bad specimen of what in the next generation would have been 

 called a trimmer ; and he panegyrised with equal zeal Charles I., 

 Cromwell, and Charles II. As a poet, a wit, and a man of 

 letters, he enjoyed an unrivalled fame in his own day ; but his 

 works are little read now, and deservedly so. His verses never 

 jar upon the ear, and his ideas but rarely offend the taste ; but 

 he very seldom rises above the tamest mediocrity. The simplest 

 and least ambitious among Waller's poems are to a modern 

 reader the most pleasing. The following very graceful song to 

 a rose is a very favourable specimen of his manner : 



" Go, lovely rose ! ] " Small is the worth 



Tell her that wastes her time Of beauty from the light ro- 

 und me, tired : 

 That now she knows. Bid her come forth, 



When I resemble her to thee, ' Suffer herself to be desired, 



How sweet and fair she seems And not blush so to be od- 



to be. mired. 



' Tell her that's young. 



And shuns to have her graces 



spied. 

 That hadst thou sprung 



In deserts where no men 



abide, 



Thou musthaveuncommended 

 died. 



" Then die ! that she. 



The common fate of all things 



rare, 

 May read in thee : 



How small a space of time 



they share. 



That are so wondrous sweet 

 and fair." 



Sir John Denham, whom Johnson, as we have seen, coupled 

 with Waller as an improver of our numbers, was not a very 

 voluminous writer. His best as well as most celebrated poem 

 is " Cooper's Hill." It is the earliest of a class of poems which 

 have since become extremely common poems in honour of 

 particular localities. The subject, " Cooper's Hill," is a spot of 

 that name close to the Thames. Denham, in a manner varied. 



