it is difficult, or even impossible, to mark out the caroline from the jacobean poets, who, again, overlap with the elizabethan poets. the chief schools of the caroline poets were (1) the writers occupied mainly with holy things, such as crashaw, herbert, and vaughan. next (2) come the crowd of "gentlemen who wrote with ease," now and then triumphantly well, but often loosely and carelessly, such are lovelace, carew, suckling, and minor names. herrick stands by himself as a consummate lyrist, but his mood is often, though he was a parish priest, that of the gay cavalier. marvell had many facets, and milton, of course, is apart, a world of poetry in himself.
crashaw.
richard crashaw, the son of a controversial protestant preacher, was born in london, early in the second ten years of the seventeenth century. he went to the charterhouse school and to peterhouse in cambridge, where he took his master's degree in 1638. his earlier verses were latin exercises. he was expelled from his fellowship at cambridge because he would, not take the solemn league and covenant, in 1644: that odd document was forced on men under "the new liberty". he had written a hymn to st. theresa while still a protestant; when he retired to france he became a catholic. in 1646 the poet cowley, his friend, found him in great poverty, and induced the almost equally poor exiled queen of england to use her influence in his favour. he obtained a canonry at loretto, where he died in 1649. his poems, sacred and secular, "steps to the temple," were published in 1646;[pg 329] another edition, with an interesting preface concerning his saintly life at cambridge, is of 1648-1649.
pope, at the age of 22, criticized crashaw with much superiority; "he writ like a gentleman" (that is, like an amateur), not "to establish a reputation". what pope did in his anxiety to establish a reputation was not done "like a gentleman". "nothing regular or just can be expected from him," "no man can be a poet who writes for diversion only". crashaw's pious outpourings were scarcely "writ for diversion," but things "just and regular" are not his chief care. a fiery vehemence, an overloaded ornament are his quality and his defect. for example in "the weeper" (st. mary magdalen) he writes:—
not in the evening's eyes
when they red with weeping are
for the sun that dies,
sits sorrow with a face so fair,
nowhere but here did ever meet
sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
here he has his style in hand. but when he calls the magdalen's tears
ye simpering sons of those fair eyes
he has certainly found the most inappropriate epithet.
many of his sacred poems are a kind of brief religious epigrams in four lines. his "hymn of the nativity" is a "fade" thing, compared with milton's. in longer poems he uses rhymed decasyllabic couplets with some skill: "on a prayer book sent to mrs. m." is a good ode in the irregular verse and conceited manner of the time, but to speak of what carew does speak of as mrs. m.'s "heavenly armful" is to remind us of a letter of robert burns on a purely secular subject. save for the hymn to st. theresa, with "that not impossible she," "the flaming heart," and some pretty translations, crashaw, like all the cavalier poets except carew, is usually on a low poetic level. but in the pieces mentioned, and above all towards the close of "the flaming heart,"
singing still he soars and soaring ever singeth.
[pg 330]
herbert.
george herbert, author of "the temple," was born on 13 april, 1593; was of noble descent, and a younger brother of lord herbert of cherbury. from his fifth to his twelfth year george probably lived at oxford with his mother. he then went to westminster school; thence to trinity college, cambridge (1609), where he obtained a fellowship (1616) and early in 1619 was chosen public orator. in this capacity he wrote the letters of the university to kings, princes, and the great in general who visited it. he became a friend of bacon and of bishop andrewes, ludovick, duke of lennox, and james, marquis of hamilton. as a schoolboy he had written latin epigrams against the hildebrand of scottish presbyterianism, the learned and truculent andrew melville, for whose tyranny in scotland james vi and i took an unconstitutional revenge when safe on the throne of england. in a war of latin verse andrew was very capable of holding his own.
herbert, while at cambridge, was a somewhat assiduous courtier of "gentle king jamie," though we do not know that he gratified the monarch by adopting the scottish and continental pronunciation of latin and greek. the death of james probably disappointed any hopes he may have had of state employment.
in 1627 he resigned his oratorship, and according to izaak walton retired to a country place in kent where he meditated on the choice of a secular or saintly life. he preferred the saintly, took holy orders, lost his beloved mother in 1627, married jane danvers in 1629, and was presented to the living of bemerton, between wilton and salisbury, in the next year. he died in 1633, and walton must be consulted for "an almost incredible story of the great sanctity of the short remainder of his holy life". on the sunday before his death he rose, took a musical instrument, and "sang to it such hymns as the angels and he and mr. ferrar" (of little gidding) "now sing in heaven".
his poems, "the temple," were published in 1633, and their great popularity is a proof that piety had not wholly deserted the anglican church for the sects. "the temple" opens with "the porch," a series of moral and religious counsels, in verses[pg 331] of six stanzas. the poem "affliction" is autobiographical: at first, in his career, "there was no month but may". then came maladies and the deaths of friends
whereas my birth and spirit rather took
the way that takes the town,
thou didst betray me to a lingering book
and wrap me in a gown...
ah, my dear god, though i am quite forgot,
let me not love thee, if i love thee not.
sacred poetry is of all kinds the most difficult. herbert's is full of conceits, though he has not the extravagances that mar the work of donne and crashaw. verses in the shape of altars and of wings are examples of extreme decadence, but these are rare. herbert's simplest poem is his best, the famous
sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
the bridal of the earth and sky,
the dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
for thou must die.
"the pearl" is also of great beauty and autobiographic interest. he knows the ways of learning, honour, and pleasure, and he has chosen the better way. the british church is commended as the midway between "her on the hills" (the seven hills) and her that
in the valley is so shy
of dressing, that her hair doth lie
about her ears;
while she avoids her neighbour's pride,
she wholly goes on th' other side,
and nothing wears;
better than wearing "rags of aaron's old wardrobe" said milton. "the quip" hath a certain holy gaiety, as of a ballad. herbert was not a great poet, he never storms the cloudcapt towers, and "flaming walls of the world," like crashaw. but he has been dear to many holy and humble men of heart.
vaughan.
henry vaughan and his twin brother thomas were born in 1622, at newton st. bridget, on the usk, in south wales, hence[pg 332] he chose to style himself "silurist" from the name of the ancient tribe of that region. there is some confusion between him and his brother thomas, who certainly went (1638) to jesus college, oxford, while henry's name is not on the books. henry is said to have studied law in london. in the civil war he may have taken up arms, at least he saw, if he did not fight in the battle of rowton heath (24 sept., 1645) and he commemorates in a poem the courage of a friend, mr. r. w., who fell on the cavalier side. in some humorous verses about a huge cloak borrowed from another friend he speaks of wearing it during the royalist retreat from the dee, and about the puritan soldiery that seized him. in a latin poem, "ad posteros," he says that he merely lamented the war; in any case he won no laurels and probably shed no blood. "the bard does not fight," says a gaelic proverb. he studied medicine, and lived retired at brecknock. his first verses (1641) congratulate charles i on his return from scotland. in 1646 appeared his "poems," including a rather tame translation of the tenth satire of juvenal on "the vanity of human wishes," with some pretty love lyrics to amoret. unlike suckling and carew, these volatile hearts,
i not for an hour did love,
or for a day desire,
but with my soul had from above
this endless holy fire.
he "courted the mind," not the body.
his volume, "olor iscanus" (the swan of usk) appeared in 1651, opening with a eulogy of his beautiful native river, in smooth rhymed octosyllabic verse, mixed with decasyllabic couplets. there are also epistles to friends, one deplores the antiquated dullness of brecknock, another celebrates the matchless orinda, mrs. phillips, and there are translations from latin verse.
vaughan lives, not by these poems, nor by "thalia rediviva," but by his "silex scintillans," the sparkling flint, sacred poems of 1650-1655. he professedly follows george herbert, being "the least of his many pious converts". direct imitations of[pg 333] herbert are not infrequent in these hymns, which, like herbert, sigh for the far-away days when angels sat at abraham's board,
o, how familiar then was heaven!
there is a party who prefer herbert to vaughan, another that prefer vaughan to herbert. the silurist perhaps strikes the higher and the deeper note, when he does strike it, for all the cavalier poets, sacred or secular, blossomed but rarely into perfect and memorable song: they would excel in an opening verse, in a phrase, but their full inspiration was occasional. a line like the second in "vanity of spirit" is rare:—
quite spent with thoughts, i left my cell and lay
where a shrill spring tuned to the early day.
"the retreat":—
happy those early days, when i
shone in my angel infancy
is perfect, and has a forenote of wordsworth's "intimations of immortality".
like wordsworth, vaughan finds the divine near him everywhere:—
there's not a wind can stir,
or beam pass by,
but straight i think, though far
thy hand is nigh.
"silence and stealth of days" is excellent, but never quite recaptures the charm of the opening phrase. "the burial of an infant" has the purity of a snowdrop: and "they are all gone into the world of light" haunts the memory; while "the timber" is a set of variants on a brief melancholy note of homer. there are lovely lines, not unlike herrick's, on "st. mary magdalen," and her locks,
which with skill'd negligence are shed
about thy curious, wild, young head.
vaughan lived to see another revolution, and died in 1695.
[pg 334]
herrick.
robert herrick, son of a prosperous goldsmith of a leicestershire family, was born in london, in 1591, and for twelve years was an "elizabethan," though his poems are "caroline". in 1607 herrick was apprenticed to his uncle; in 1613 entered as a fellow commoner at st. john's, cambridge, he migrated to trinity hall, and took his master's degree in 1620. he had friends and patrons at court, was one of the sons of ben jonson, and lived on his wits and on his patrons, in a poetical, musical, pleasant idleness. he took holy orders, not in the spirit of george herbert, and in 1629 received the living of dean prior, in devonshire. he did not desert, and probably did not neglect, his parish, from which he was thrust by the puritans in 1647; in the next year his "noble numbers," and "hesperides" was printed in "a rich disorder"—the lines are on various levels in this most desirable volume. the frontispiece shows a fleshly, muscular rather roman-looking poet to whose lips the bees bring honey. at the restoration, herrick was restored to dean prior, where he died in october, 1674.
"dull devonshire" he calls the county, in his verses; he did not live long to resent its rural torpor. his delightful poems are all full of the country life, they smell april and may. his book is like a large laughing meadow in early june, all diapered with flowers, and sweet with the songs of birds, some a mere note or two of merry music, some as prolonged and varied, though never so passionate, as the complaint of the nightingale.
i sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
of april, may, of june and july flowers;
i sing of maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.
everything is sweet, spontaneous, glad and musical. some pieces are far from straitlaced of course, but, even setting these apart, "the hesperides" hold the greatest and richest bouquet of english songs. favourites are "delight in disorder," "gather ye rose buds while ye may," "corinna's going a maying,"
[pg 335]
to anthea (bid me to live and i will live
thy protestant to be.)
to meadows (ye have been fresh and green,
ye have been filled with flowers.)
to daffodils (fair daffodils, we weep to see.)
to blossoms (fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
why do ye fall so fast?)
and so on; every reader culls and chooses for himself, and cannot go wrong. herrick speaks in his "noble numbers" of
my unbaptized rhymes
writ in my wild unhallowed times,
but his "noble numbers," or poems on sacred themes, show an almost unregenerate happiness.
the child of his "ode on the birth of our saviour" is, first of all, a human child to herrick, and he was in love with children as with roses. his "litany to the holy spirit" is extremely human in its foresight of death,
when the artless doctor sees
no one hope but of his fees.
his "grace for a child" is a miniature of the pathos of a child's devotion.
of herrick's epigrams, as of ben jonson's, there is no good to be said: we can only marvel how the poets stooped to imitate the worst faults of martial, their latin model.
carew.
thomas carew was one of the famous carews or careys of the west: his family was settled in gloucestershire. he was probably born about 1598: clarendon says that he died about the age of 50; and his death was in 1638 or 1639. his life "was spent with less severity or exactness than it ought to have been," but he made a good end. he seems to have been at corpus, oxford, where he took no degree; he was sewer (a court office of value), to charles i, and was among those of "the tribe of ben jonson". his poems were published (1640-1642) after his decease.
[pg 336]
suckling, in his sessions of the poets declares that carew's poems, were "seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain," in fact he did take trouble, and it is a pity that most of his contemporaries took none. his "persuasions to love" is a most musical version of that old lesson of the brief-lived rose which is taught by the greek lyrists of the anthology and by ronsard and herrick so sweetly, and so often. "give me more love or more disdain," "when thou, poor excommunicate," "he that loves a rosy cheek," the poems "in absence," "mark how the bashful morn in vain," the "elegy on maria wentworth," "ask me no more where jove bestows," and many other pieces by the lover of celia, are admirable in versification, and in their own philosophy, which is not remarkable for "severity and exactness". carew never approaches the elevation of lovelace at his best, but he perhaps never falls to the pitch of lovelace when uninspired. there are graceful turns and songs in his masque "coelum britannicum" (1634). carew's verse is a moment in the development from careless speed towards the less varied and more "correct" style that passed from waller to dry den and onwards.
lovelace.
richard lovelace is when at his best the greatest of the cavalier poets, and is personally one of the most sympathetic of men. the eldest son of sir william lovelace of "woolidge" (woolwich), he was born in 1618, educated at charterhouse school, and at gloucester hall, in oxford. he is styled "adonis" in some pleasant verses by a friend, and, like that more glorious cavalier, wogan, as described by clarendon, was "accounted the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever beheld," according to the oxford antiquary, wood. under goring, to whom he wrote a ringing song of camp revelry, he served in the inglorious expedition of charles i to scotland, in 1639; and wrote a lost play, "the soldier". for presenting a royalist petition from the county of kent to parliament (april, 1642) he was imprisoned for some weeks, and then let out on bail of ￡40,000 (?) not to leave the parliamentary lines.
he and his brothers were devoted to each other, as appears[pg 337] from poems which passed between them. he provided francis and william, slain at carmarthen, with money and men for the royal service, and dudley with the expenses of a military education. in 1646 he raised a regiment for the french service, was wounded at dunkirk, and was reported dead. his lucasta, lucy sacheverell, then married another man, and, in 1648, richard returned to england, and, with dudley, was taken and imprisoned.
in 1649 be published his "lucasta," with engravings after lely (who signs himself "p. lilly"), it is a strangely ill-printed little volume. after the death of charles i, lovelace was reduced to great poverty, and died "in gunpowder alley, near shoe lane," in 1658. his friend, charles cotton, the pupil and friend of walton, is said to have helped to support him. a second part of "lucasta," containing little of merit, was published by dudley lovelace in 1659.
like so many of the poets of his day, lovelace was inspired but seldom, and, when uninspired fell into sterile conceits and below mediocrity. his unrivalled poems of true love, "to lucasta, going beyond seas," "to alth?a, from prison," "to lucasta, going to the wars" (strangely attributed by scott to montrose), are beyond praise or rivalry. "honour is my life," wrote montrose in his bible; love and honour inspire lovelace with faultless and immortal verse. "to amarantha, that she would dishevel her hair,"
but shake your head and scatter day,
is also a charming song; and suckling could not exceed the cheerful impudence of
why shouldst thou swear i am forsworn,
since thine i vowed to be,
lady, it is already morn,
and 'twas last night i swore to thee
that fond impossibility.
we can but wish for lovelace that he had ridden with wogan from dover to the north, and died with the last of the loyal on the hills.
[pg 338]
suckling.
sir john suckling, the son of a wealthy man, who held various offices at court, was born at whitton in 1609 (?). not much is known of his education, but in town he was one of the tribe of ben jonson, wits and courtiers, such as davenant, carew, and endymion porter. his "session of the poets" is inelegant banter of his friends. his plays "aglaura," "the goblins," "brennoralt," are very decadent in style, and a man must have a strong passion for the drama who can read them "for human pleasure".
in charles's expedition against the scottish covenanters, in 1639, each army occupied itself in observation, charles at berwick, leslie at duns law. the commanders on both sides were dispirited, and if a troop of horse, equipped by suckling at great expense, ran away, it was probably from kelso, where a small royalist command was driven in. we know nothing with certainty, but derisive ballads were made against the poet's courage, though there never was a braver man than colonel gardiner, whose dragoons on every occasion used their spurs, in 1745. suckling died in paris in 1642; various tales are told of the cause of his decease.
suckling is the typical jolly, audacious, amorous, now constant, now amusingly volatile cavalier poet. his verses are well made but seldom so well as carew's; and though he is not always on pleasure bent he never approaches the heights of lovelace. the first edition of his poems, "fragmenta aurea," is of 1646, and the frontispiece exactly meets our natural theory of suckling's personal aspect. he looks very pleasant in his armour. among his successes in verse are
'tis now since i sate down before
that foolish fort, a heart
and "a ballad of a wedding" (the most charming thing of its
kind in english poetry):
out upon it, i have loved
three whole days together,
when, dearest, i but think of thee,
and
why so pale and wan, fond lover?
[pg 339]
it was with very slight trouble that the gay suckling stormed the gates of poetic immortality.
habington.
william habington (1605-1654) was of a catholic family; his father (of hindlip in worcestershire), had suffered on the occasions of babington's and of the gunpowder plots. the poet was educated abroad (st. omer's and paris). he married lucy, daughter of lord powys; his muse was the domestic, and he ceaselessly celebrated his wife under the name of "castara". his play, "the queen of arragon," had some success. many of the lyrics to castara are quite pretty, whether they be prenuptial or written in wedlock, whether castara is "sick," or "in a trance," or beginning to recover, or weeping, or setting forth on a journey. in lines to the celebrated first and only marquess of argyll, habington applauds those feats of military daring which history does not recognize in the vanquished of inverlochy and kilsyth. a catholic who thought the cause of the covenant "just," must have had a very open mind. wood says, in fact, that habington "did run with the times, and was not unknown to oliver cromwell". habington's relations with argyll are rather puzzling. in addition to his many poems on his wife, habington composed eight elegies on the death of george talbot, esquire.
cartwright.
william cartwright (1611-1643) must have been a most amiable man, agreeable university wit, and "florid and seraphical preacher". he passed much of his life at oxford, being a student of christ church; he was an active military organizer when king charles and the court were at oxford, he was junior proctor, lectured on the metaphysics, was lamented by the king and university on his death, and was admired in his life by dr. fell.
his poems are mainly birthday odes, and complimentary addresses to ladies. in the person of lady carlisle he celebrated,
masses of ivory blushing here and there,
[pg 340]
and he wrote disdainfully of what is called "platonic" love. he also wrote a song called "the ordinary".
davenant.
sir william davenant (1606-1668) was more interesting as a man, and in his relations with greater men of letters, than as a poet. his vast "epic" "gondibert," concerned with the heroic age of lombardy, and written in quatrains of alternately rhyming decasyllabic lines, is a monument of misplaced ambition. davenant's father was landlord of the crown inn, at oxford, and davenant did not discourage the legend that shakespeare was his mother's admirer. at a very early age, davenant wrote the briefest of elegiac odes on shakespeare's death. his best lyric is
the lark now leaves his watery nest,
and climbing, shakes his dewy wings,
he takes this window for the east,
and to implore your light, he sings:
"awake, awake, the morn will never rise
till she can dress her beauty at your eyes".
davenant was of lincoln college, oxford; was one of the london wits, and is bantered by suckling in "the session of the poets" for a sad misfortune. to lombardy, davenant turned, in 1629, for the topic of his tragedy of albovine, a theme with which poets have rarely been successful. in 1638 davenant was made poet laureate; he managed a theatre; in 1641 was accused of being engaged in a cavalier enterprise, escaped to france, returned, was knighted (1643) for his services at the siege of gloucester; failed, in 1646, to make charles accept the terms of the covenanters, and, after various loyal adventures, was placed in the tower (1650). milton is said to have pleaded for him, and he, later, for milton. on the restoration he was rewarded by the patent of a theatre, where he produced plays by no means shakespearean.
he forms a link between the shakespeare of his childish years, milton, and the young dryden. waller and cowley wrote the only recommendatory verses for his "gondibert," which is dedicated, with davenant's ideas on the art of poetry, to thomas[pg 341] hobbes. davenant modestly compared himself to homer. he trusts that his verses in "gondibert" will be "sung at village feasts," "like the works of homer ere they were joined together and made a volume by the athenian king". a stranger combination of vanity with erroneous pedantry has seldom been printed.
cowley.
the name of abraham cowley is likely to live as long as histories of english literature are written, and yet some students who are not passionately fond of lydgate would much liefer read lydgate than cowley. to charles lamb, on the other hand, cowley's was "one of the sweetest names, which carry a perfume in the mention". he was born in london in 1618, and dr. johnson suspected that his father was not only a puritan but a grocer.
a copy of "the faery queen" which lay on the window-seat of his mother's chamber is said to have wakened cowley's ambition. he "lisped in numbers," and published his verses at westminster school, whence he went on to cambridge. there he is said to have written much of his biblical epic, the "davideis". the poem is in the heroic couplet, thus
rais'd with the news he from high heaven receives,
straight to his diligent god just thanks he gives
to divine nob directs he then his flight,
a small town, great in fame, by levi's right.
the poem breaks off at the passage where jonathan, after fighting all day, tastes some honey of the wild bees.
to compare with milton's satan the satan of cowley,
thrice did he knock his iron teeth, thrice howl
and into frowns his wrathful forehead roll
is to perceive that the cavalier was no match for the puritan poet in sacred epic.
cowley had done much secretary's work for charles i during the war, he was employed by the queen in paris, and returned in 1656 to england, where he was arrested, but presently released. he returned to france just as the star of molière was rising, came[pg 342] home at the restoration, was dissatisfied with such reward as his loyalty obtained, and left town for a very pleasant house at chertsey, where he died in 1667. his set of amatory verses, "the mistress," holds a high place in collections. he revelled in what dr. johnson called "metaphysical" conceits. odes he wrote in great numbers, in imitation of pindar; one of them is addressed to the royal society and hails the new birth of divine science.
pindaric odes became a fashion that lasted long, and, in its day, produced little of merit till dryden came. not much of cowley in verse is now read for pleasure except the lively and graceful "chronicle" of the names of his mistresses. if we could suppose that without cowley the great odes in the language would not have been written, cowley might be regarded as an important influence. but when we turn to his "praise of pindar,"
pindar is imitable by none;
the ph?nix pindar is a vast species alone,
cowley does not seem very inspiring! but dr. johnson held that cowley "was the first who imparted to english numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less," while "he left such specimens of excellence" in versification "as enabled succeeding poets to improve it".
denham.
the poems of sir john denham (1615-1669) might, had they perished, have been reckoned in "the veniable part of things lost". he was of the royalist party, and his occasional political rhymes are humourless libels. in 1642 he published "the sophy," and surprised the wits, for he had been best known as a dicer and gambler. in 1642 his "cooper's hill," an early example of local poetry, appeared, and in this was little of what dr. johnson called "the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse," which disfigured his translation of the second book of the "?neid". for restricting the sense to the couplet, denham was reckoned with waller among the reformers of english poetry.
four lines of "cooper's hill," admired by dryden, are all that men remember; he wrote not ungracefully on cowley, and he[pg 343] succeeded in getting ￡10,000 for the royal cause from the scottish traders in poland. he is no longer, as by dr. johnson, deservedly considered as one of the fathers of our english poetry, "who improved our taste and advanced our language".
sherburne, stanley, browne, cotton.
it is customary to mention among english poets of the seventeenth century sir edward sherburne, thomas stanley his kinsman, alexander browne, and charles cotton, whose birth and death dates range from 1618 to 1702—sherburne's life occupied the whole space. all but cotton, the latest born (1630), were of the royalist party. sherburne dealt most in translations and sacred verses; browne in ditties of love, wine, and politics, with epistles and elegies; stanley was a scholar—his amorous verses often approach excellence; cotton celebrated chloris with little inspiration, wrote angling songs, and was the friend of izaak walton, a fact that preserves his name in lavender. he wrote the part on fly-fishing (in which walton was no expert) for a late edition of "the compleat angler," and (1681) celebrated in verse "the wonders of the peak," as he had sung the praises of his well-loved river, the dove. his "scarronides or virgil travestie," in the manner of scarron gave offence to reverent admirers of the "?neid".
waller.
edmund waller, certainly the greatest wit of his time (for it would be sacrilege to speak of milton as "a wit"), was born at coleshill in bucks, on 3 march, 1606. he was early left a rich orphan, was educated at eton, and king's, cambridge, entered parliament at 18, and was familiar with the court of james i. his first-known poem, on "the escape of the prince at saint andero," is in the same correct and elegant heroic verse as that of his later measures: waller had at 18 command of the instrument to which dryden fell heir. possibly the poem, with some of his other loyal pieces of almost the same period, may have been improved by waller in later days, but his ear was already as excellent as that of davies in his "nosce te ipsum" or of fairfax in[pg 344] his translation of tasso. waller had no taste for the venture-some irregular lines of his contemporaries, and seldom, like so many of them, drew amorous conceits from the depths of the fanciful science of the age.
adulation of people in power from charles i and his queen to charles ii and his queen, or to cromwell in "the panegyric," was the common theme of waller. as he is always tuneful and always vivacious he may be read with interest, whether he congratulates prince charles on his escape from shipwreck, or the king on his fortitude when he heard of the murder of buckingham, or cromwell on his victories, or mary of modena on a tea-party or monmouth on the defeat of the covenanters at bothwell bridge. his love verses to sacharissa (lady dorothea sidney) or to amoret (lady sophia murray?) are seldom tedious, and his "on a girdle," and "go, lovely rose," and "tell me, lovely loving pair" are among the imperishable flowers of the english anthology.
while he lived, and he lived to be 81, waller always wrote well, nor was he less distinguished as an orator in parliament, and a delightful companion. in the short and long parliaments he appeared as a moderate member of the parliamentary party, and opposed the abolition of episcopacy. revolution, not reform, was the winning card; and waller slid into what was called waller's plot. he organized what may be called a scheme of constitutional resistance to the king's enemies, but with this coexisted, as usually happens, a more strenuous and violent conspiracy under sir nicholas crispe.
the affair was detected on 31 may, 1643, waller and his brother-in-law, tompkyns, were arrested: waller lost head and heart, confessed all that he knew, and more that he conjectured; lost honour, and kept his life at the ransom of a heavy fine, and exile (at rouen). he made his peace with cromwell, who had nothing to fear and something to gain from him, the famous panegyric of 1654. when charles returned, waller's congratulations were deemed by the king less good than his compliments to cromwell. "poets, sir," answered waller, "succeed better in fiction than in truth." the treacherous politician[pg 345] was forgiven on every side, the witty poet was welcome in parliament and everywhere.
waller's first wife was rich, his second was fertile. when at last his doctor pronounced his sentence of death, he quoted some lines of virgil, and went home to die. john evelyn had been "his worthy friend": to no man were men more charitable than to waller.
his "battle of the summer islands" is mildly mock-heroic: the compliments which he lavished on other poets, as to evelyn on his translation of lucretius, outlive their works which he praised. dryden esteemed him generously, and all the more because he was judiciously applauded by sir george mackenzie, the "bluidy mackenzie" of the covenanters.
with his songs waller has one foot in the paradise of lovelace and suckling and carew; as represented by his heroic couplets he almost enters the augustan age. waller well understood the transitoriness of poetic popularity, shifting with every change of manners, language and taste
poets that lasting marble seek
must carve in latin or in greek;
we write in sand, our language grows,
and, like the tide, our work o'er flows.
chaucer his sense can only boast
the glory of his numbers lost.
happily the glory of chaucer's "numbers" has been recovered; nor is that of waller's lost: his "sense" sometimes can only be appreciated by aid of some knowledge of history.
marvell.
in a sense and as regards the better part of his poetry, andrew marvell may be reckoned among cavalier poets. he had not, in full measure, the occasional but unique inspiration of lovelace, but he is comparatively free from wanton conceits, and never falls into the abyss. he has, in addition to the charm of the cavaliers at their best, a certain delicacy and reserve, and a sense of natural beauty and a rural felicity in which they do not abound. he has none of the stains of the tavern.
[pg 346]
marvell was born on 31 march, 1621, at winestead, near hull, being son of the parson of winestead. he went to trinity college, cambridge, at an early age, did not wait to take his master's degree, and in 1641-1646, travelled widely on the continent. in 1649 he wrote commendatory verses to lovelace's "lucasta," and in these he speaks as a sympathetic cavalier, though, like other quiet people who loved a settled government, he later addressed cromwell as "an angel," which may have made noll smile grimly. in 1650 marvell became tutor to the daughter of lord fairfax, the parliamentary general, but no regicide. at appleton house, near bilborow hill, marvell wrote his most charming poems of country life and innocent loves. he compared the hill to the delicately pencilled curve of an eyebrow, and assures "mountains more unjust," such at the alps, that they "the earth deform, and heaven fright". for more than a century any peaked mountain or rocky eminence was reckoned "horrid".
marvell made at this time the acquaintance of milton, who recommended him as acquainted with foreign languages and classical literature for the post of assistant secretary: which he obtained in 1657. in the circle of government, marvell learned to appreciate and was induced to applaud cromwell on his return from his visit of conquest and massacre to ireland. this poem contains the familiar and beautiful lines appreciative of the behaviour of charles i on the scaffold. in 1659-1660 marvell entered parliament as member for hull: in 1663-1665 he went abroad on various embassies, and, after playing the part of a fierce satirist of the sinners of the restoration, he died on 18 august, 1678.
his prose satires "the rehearsal transprosed" and others (1672-1678) were inspired by that terror of a restoration of catholicism, which flamed up in the cowardly ferocities of titus oates's "popish plot". though a catholic in sympathy, charles ii knew well that if he announced his change of religion he would be "sent off on his travels" again; and to travel he was not inclined. the satires of marvell in verse "we still read," says swift, who speaks of the author's "genius". it had none of the majesty of dryden's nor of pope's polish, and marvell is best known for what is best in his poetry: "the nymph complaining[pg 347] for her fawn"; "the garden," which has much of the merit of milton's "l'allegro" and "il penseroso"; "the mower to the glowworms," "bermudas," "to his coy mistress," with its charming humour; and "the definition of love," which scarcely maintains the level of its first noble stanza. such poems on divine subjects as "the coronet" are reminiscent of herbert, but less conceited, retaining marvell's grace of flowers and gardens.
milton.
john milton, son of a "money-scrivener," was born in bread street, london, on 9 december, 1608. his father, though a puritan, was in sympathy with literature, and his wealth permitted his son to devote himself, as long as he pleased, to studies of many kinds, and to train himself sedulously for the great poetic task which he deemed himself "born to do". milton was thus one of the first of our strictly professional non-dramatic poets,—like shelley, tennyson, browning, and wordsworth[1]—who were able to devote themselves deliberately to the cultivation of their genius. milton never wrote for his livelihood, and, except when he gave himself up to political and theological controversy, he was always preparing himself for the great poem which he was determined to make. he entered at st. paul's school in 1620, and thence went to christ's college, cambridge, where his beauty and refined morals won for him the name of the lady of christ's. he put on his master's gown in 1632, and then for six years resided at his father's place, horton, in buckinghamshire, the county of john hampden.
a man's best poems are usually written before he is 30. milton was 21 when (1629) he produced the ode "on the morning of christ's nativity". in this splendid and immortal piece he invokes, as always, "the heavenly muse," and, in addition to the beautiful measure of the hymn, in harmony rivalling spenser's, he already strikes his own sonorous note, as in "the trumpet spoke not to the armed throng," a glorious combination and harmony of sounds. here advance
[pg 348]
the helmed cherubim
and sworded seraphim,
who are, in "paradise lost," to make the floor of heaven
ring to the roar of an angel onset.
the stanzas on the flight of the ancient classic deities, even the genius of "haunted spring and dale," and the nymphs, are of a high and melancholy imagination. but milton "found the subject to be above the years he had when he wrote it," and "was nothing satisfied with what he had done". after deliberately selecting and weighing many themes, for example that of arthur, he returned when old, blind, and fallen on what he deemed "evil days," to the topic of wars in heaven, and man's fall and redemption.
"l'allegro" and "il penseroso" are impeccable early poems. milton is not yet so puritan as to denounce merry england, "the jocund rebecks," the dancing youths and maids, the tales of fairy mab and the brownie, and the stage: if jonson and sweetest shakespeare be the playwrights. milton was deeply learned in the classics, but there is none of the pedantry of his age in his allusions to prince memnon, or "that starr'd aethiop queen," though now many readers must turn to notes for information about them. octosyllabic lines had never before been written with such variety of grave and gay as by milton, who in verse is a supreme master and "inventor of harmonies". spenser had not his variety: in milton's poems, as in his lines "on a solemn music"
the bright seraphim, in burning row
their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow.
yet milton's party in the state set its face like a flint against the "solemn music" of the churches as against the "joyous rebecks" of the lads and lasses.
in 1634 milton produced a masque, the one great and enduring masque of the many that were played in the halls of princes and peers. "comus" was presented at ludlow castle, the house of lord bridgewater, president of wales, and the actors were his family. the muse is heavenly, the theme is divine chastity;[pg 349] there is no such awful contrast to the purity of the lady as that which fletcher, in "the faithful shepherdess," presents in the person of the deplorable cloe. as in the plays of euripides, an explanatory prologue is spoken by a spirit, who later appears as the shepherd thyrsis. we learn that comus (revelry) the son of dionysus the wine god and circe the enchantress of the "odyssey," has settled in "this ominous wood" in britain; tempts travellers with the crystal cup of his sorceries, and changes them into beast-headed adventurers. then comus enters with his torch-bearing company, swine, bulls, goats, bears, and in beautiful lines, recommends his unholy ethics.
come, let us our rites begin,
'tis only daylight that makes sin.
but something warns him that a chaste being draws near; he dismisses his troop; the lady enters, she has lost her way in the dark wood, her brothers have strayed apart, she hopes to meet merry peasants who will guide her; she calls them by a song, and comus appears, summoned by the notes
how sweetly did they float upon the wings
of silence, through the empty-vaulted night
at every fall smoothing the raven down
of darkness, till it smiled.
thinking comus an honest shepherd, the lady follows him: her brothers enter in search of her, the spirit warns them of her danger, and gives them such virtuous herbs as hermes gives to odysseus in circe's isle. armed with these they scatter the satyrs of comus, but only sabrina, nymph of the severn, called and replying in lyrics of ineffable beauty can release the lady from the enchanted chair of comus. the majesty, delicacy, and beauty of the ideas are matched by the exquisite music of the blank verse and lyric passages, for at the age of 26 and in his poetic prime of youth, milton was already a master of every technical resource of poetry; of everything, except humour and the power of creating human characters. he might compose poetry more august and sustained than "comus," but he never could be a better poet man he was in 1634. sanity, order, form, absence of vain conceit and[pg 350] ingenious antithesis were as natural to milton as they were unknown to donne and the fletchers.
milton's next great poem, "lycidas," was composed shortly before he left horton, early in 1638, on a visit to italy. the occasion, which other cambridge poets celebrated, was the death of a friend, edward king, drowned in crossing the irish channel. we do not know from external evidence that milton was more attached to king, personally, than shelley was to keats. "lycidas" is not a cry from an almost broken heart, as are parts of the "in memoriam" of tennyson. it has been said that admiration of "lycidas" is a test of a man's capacity for appreciating poetry,—a hard saying for dr. johnson. that milton had a true affection for king the classic allusions and the pastoral guise of his ode may cause some to doubt. but there is deep natural feeling in the plangent words,
but oh! the heavy change now thou art gone,
now thou art gone and never must return!
the story disguised as a friendship between theocritean shepherds is really that of a college friendship between two boyish poets, and no later friendships can be so tender, close, dear; the lost voice ever echoing in the memory. the verse is a solemn music: the mingling of the figures of classical mythology with st. peter, and with camus, "reverend sire," vexed dr. johnson, but he would have been equally vexed by the only oxford pendant to this cambridge lament, the "thyrsis" of matthew arnold.
indeed what really annoyed the good doctor was the certainly regrettable introduction of an attack on his beloved church of england, and the ominous mention of "that two-handed engine at the door," which did not strike once, but often, nor only at the neck of an archbishop, but slew strafford, hamilton, and the king.
"the dread voice" comes across the shepherd's dirge; the sicilian muse, the muse of theocritus, is bidden to return, but to milton she will not come again. we think of him, at this time, as "young but intolerably severe," like apollo in matthew arnold's "empedocles on etna". like wordsworth and shelley he was devoid of humour,—and thus fails—as shelley did not[pg 351] fail, thanks to his geniality, and kindness and charms—to win universal sympathy. think of shakespeare,—who does not love the man, and who does dare to love milton! he was not vain with the childlike vanity of some poets, but he was as proud as his own satan. he not only had genius next to the highest, but he knew it, tended it, cared for it, and could scarcely find a task that was great enough for his powers. we respect his self-knowledge, applaud his resolution, and are much happier with shakespeare and scott, who never gave a thought to their genius.
on returning from italy to his country, the country of "the bishops' wars," milton, in aldersgate street, devoted himself to the education of his nephews, to sonnets, and then to prose works, as already mentioned, all written in the cause of sacred liberty. he, like the old scots earl, did not love "the new liberty" as offered by the presbyterian, whose name was "old priest writ large". his marriage, in 1643, to a lady of a loyal family, mary powell, was unhappy: she went back, in a short time, to her own people in 1645 she returned, had three daughters, and died in 1652. his private unhappiness made milton plead vainly for freedom of divorce, a remedy which has its own unsatisfactory aspect. in 1652 milton lost his eyesight, like his
blind thamyris and blind maeonides,
and teiresias and phineus, prophets old.
his sonnets are his only poems of this period; when he argued for divorce, and for liberty of printing, defended the slaying of his king, wrangled with political opponents in english and latin, and was latin secretary to the commonwealth. an accomplished sonneteer in italian, milton in english observed, usually, the strict petrarchian rules; and had the wisdom and self-restraint to write not too many sonnets, most of them choicely good. even that in which he commemorates the noble aboyne, and the son of col of the left hand, and gilespie grumach is a good sonnet. he mourned for the late massacre in piedmont, but not for those of drogheda and dundee. his nobility of soul never declares itself more gloriously than in the sonnets on his blindness, of these eyes.
[pg 352]
overplied,
in liberty's defence, my glorious task.
but there was no liberty left for anglicans, catholics, or presbyterians in scotland, who were turned out of their court of general assembly.
after rejecting many topics which had occurred to him as possible subjects for his life-long purpose to write a great epic, milton returned to the inspiration of the heavenly muse, and settled (1655-1667) on "paradise lost". he did wisely, for a human epic like the others, the "iliad," the "odyssey," and all the greek, roman, italian, and french imitations of these, demands a pell-mell of human characters, noble, treacherous, and humorous. in creating human characters milton had little skill, and, in "paradise lost" there are but two, adam and eve. in genesis they are extremely human, but milton had to make them at first perfect, and place them in a situation where no other human beings ever were. for the rest, he had the magnificent satan, fallen through a pride and independence of character with which the poet was in sympathy; while belial and abdiel are also, each in his own way, heroic. the heavenly angels are less clearly marked and discriminated.
in athens, milton would have rivalled ?schylus; with euripides he does not pair. he has the greatest of stages, the universe, chaos, heaven and hell. his theme is the mystery of human fortunes; man, what he might be, what he is. he uses a non-biblical poetic legend, the war in heaven, which had been treated, we saw, by an anglo-saxon poet, and has a parallel in the mythology of the kaitish, a savage tribe of central australia. there too the great self-created atnatu of the highest heaven hurls his disobedient children down to earth. it was inevitable that satan, not adam, should become the hero, as mephistopheles, not faust, is the hero of goethe's play—is the interesting character. milton in his puritan way describes himself as "not sedulous by nature to indite wars," hitherto "alone heroic deemed," while modest domestic patience and heroic martyrdom are unsung, or as in the case of jeanne d'arc, have proved too lofty a theme for any poet. but milton being a poet is subject to inevitable poetic limitations.[pg 353] the patience which eve displayed in everyday domestic life, after her expulsion from paradise, would not be a theme for the epic; and milton "never stoops his wing" when he sings of the raising of the banner of satan, and "the banner cry of hell".
in the true spirit of epics, his poem ends with no clash of arms, no blare of trumpets, but with "a dying fall";
they, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
through eden took their solitary way;
in such manner, too, ceases the "iliad,"
thus held they funeral for knightly hector.
milton's blank verse is the stateliest, most variously tuneful, and most relieved by varieties of pause, most sonorous with the mysterious music of ancient names. all in this is perfect. the verse-paragraphs—the opening paragraph is of thirty lines—could only be arrayed by milton. we do not often meet what seems to us a bathos, as when satan, fallen from heaven, "views the dismal situation". after viewing the dismal situation satan is himself again:—
all is not lost; the unconquerable will,
and study of revenge, immortal hate,
and courage never to submit or yield,
and what is else not to be overcome,
that glory never shall his wrath or might
extort from me.
milton is not pedantic, but as homer has his catalogue of ships and heroes, milton outdoes him with his catalogue of fallen angels, gods of the nations, moloch, chemosh, ashtoreth, dagon, osiris, isis, horns, "the ionian gods of javan's issue," and they
who with saturn old
fled over adria to the hesperian fields,
and o'er the celtic roam'd the utmost isles.
milton's knowledge was equal to every demand, and his were
the unconquerable will
and courage never to submit or yield.
but, magnificent as he is, milton has always his eye on that[pg 354] ach?an "father of the rest," and he copies homer's bridal-bed of zeus and hera
under foot the violet,
crocus and hyacinth with rich inlay
broidered the ground.
"and beneath them the divine earth sent forth fresh new grass, and dewy lotus, crocus, and hyacinth." but milton gives twenty lines where homer gives four.
in comparing the two greatest of epic poets—the first, homer, with the last, milton,—we observe that each sums up in himself the whole thought and experience, and the poetic expression of a world that lies behind him. each "takes his own where he finds it," "makes all men's wit his own," as ben jonson said, in an invidious sense, of shakespeare. homer has his debts to old nameless poets; milton displays his debts to homer, and to greek, roman, and celtic poets and historians, to anglo-saxons, dutch, italians, to all song and all learning, and all that he takes he transfigures, and rounds into a harmonious whole, the immortal epic.
"paradise lost" was published in 1667, four years after milton's third marriage. it is not apparent that he was in any danger from the government of the restoration. charles ii avowed to clarendon, in a scribbled note now in the bodleian, his constitutional dislike of hanging men. the book did not sell badly for a puritan poem produced while the revel of the company of comus was maddest, and, when milton died, dryden, the literary dictator, gave due praise to the greatest of literary epics, the loftiest, the most splendidly adorned; and poets of the eighteenth century adored the style which became ridiculous, or dull, in their imitations.
in "paradise regained," a sequel which mr. ellwood, a quaker, reports himself to have suggested to milton, the great qualities of the poet are unimpaired. his verse is that which he alone could wield. his sonorous catalogues, the music of names, the eagle glance over all the kingdoms of earth and the glory of them, the triumph of the pure spirit over carnal joys; nay the haunting memories of old romance,
[pg 355]
of fairy damsels, met in forest wide,
by knights of logres, or of lyones,
lancelot, or pelleas, or pellenore,
these are all present, all are captivating.
it is natural to wish that, while young, milton had followed his dominant motive into arthur's fairy land, and told the story of galahad and the holy grail: the purity that wins the beatific vision.
his "samson agonistes," in the severest style of greek tragedy, sets forth his own strength foiled by blindness, mocked by the dull triumphs of the wanton crowd, and triumphant in death. the occasional unrhymed verse of the chorus, not in decasyllabic lines, stands for milton's curious antipathy for rhyme, in which, when he chose, he excelled. the subtleties and sophistries of delilah express his idea of one type of womanhood, the other type shines in the steadfast love of the repentant eve. the poem, with all the strength, has less of the charm of milton than his other great works.
milton died in 1674; a poet who in one sense might be styled "self-taught," for while he was so deeply read, his verse was no echo, nor ever can be re-echoed. it is foolish but natural to appraise the relative greatness of great poets, but, shakespeare apart, it is to the lonely milton that the world has always awarded the crown of england's greatest.
samuel butler.
if we could take the "god-gifted organ-voice of england," milton, as representing the anti-royalist parties in the civil war, and samuel butler, with his "hudibras," as the representative of those who stood for church and king, we could not hesitate in our choice between the two factions. but milton's was a soul that dwells apart, making its own special music, while butler produced a unique epic-satire on the furies and follies of the once triumphant presbyterians, independents, and a multitude of wild contending sects. of samuel butler's life but little is known. born at strensham in worcestershire in 1612, he was educated at the school of worcester, but could not afford to proceed to either[pg 356] university. he was clerk to a justice of the peace, was later in the service of the countess of kent, where he had leisure for study, at wrest in bedfordshire, during the war, and in the same shire resided with sir samuel luke, an active presbyterian, who, however, was opposed to the regicide. butler thus saw plenty of the people whom, in 1663, he satirized in the first part of "hudibras". that presbyterian don quixote, with his independent squire, ralph, is the wildest caricature of a type, not of an individual, and the adventures of the pair are merely burlesque. the discussions and descriptions are a tempest of ridicule falling on the fallen cause in showers of jigging and strangely rhymed octosyllabics, often so piquant that many of them are still commonly quoted though the historic allusions are forgotten. the associations of ideas in the author's mind bring out a learning as multifarious as that of burton or of browne; the book was adored at court, not least by the king, and was pirated; all three parts were put forth by walton's publisher, richard marriot, though they may have been little to the taste of the pacific author of "the compleat angler".
butler seems to have been no roysterer, but a retired, bookish, sardonic humorist, who "asked for nothing and got nothing". the court wits who sought his acquaintance did not find in him what they expected. he certainly received no notable rewards: and later poets found in him the type of neglected merit. he died in london in 1680.
after a war of religion in which all the countless factions felt certain of their own infallibility, butler, a disillusioned wit, saw nothing in the strife but what the saintly leighton called "a scuffle of drunken men in the dark". the parliamentarians
call fire and sword and desolation
a godly thorough reformation,
which always must be carried on,
and still be doing, never done,
as if religion were intended
for nothing else but to be mended...
they with more care keep holy-day
the wrong, than others the right way,
for christmas was kept as a fast, and good friday as a feast.[pg 357] the whole poem has rather less of a constructed plot than "tristram shandy"; and the strange rhymes—as of flambeau to "damn'd blow"—tickled the merry cavaliers more than they amuse later generations. what is "topical" in "hudibras" is, of course, transitory, but much of permanent and brilliant wit remains and is current in quotations: for example,
compound for sins they are inclined to
by damning those they have no mind to:
still so perverse and opposite
as if they worshipped god for spite.
butler wrote other things, the best is a dialogue in which puss and cat mimic the conversations of the lovers in the "heroic" tragedies of the restoration.
[1] all five wrote dramas, but none was a professional playwright.
