A history of British poetry from the earliest times to the beginning of the twentieth century

A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE BEGINNING
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

F. St. John Corbett

M.A. TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FELLOW, AND MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL, OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE

LONDON
GAY AND BIRD

22 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
1904

All Rights Reserved

PR

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., D.C.L., LL.D.

FIRST LORD AVEBURY,

MEMBER OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL;

MEMBER OF THE GERMAN ORDER OF MERIT I

COMMANDER OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR ;

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY ;

HON. VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY ;

HON. FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. OF LITERATURE;

VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES ;

WHOSE CONTRIBUTIONS TO HISTORY AND GENERAL LITERATI; i:K

HAVE WON FOR HIM
A REPUTATION AS HONOURABLE AS IT IS WORLD-WIDE,

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

BY MOST KIND PERMISSION.

PREFACE

AN attempt has been made in the present work to trace the history
of British poetry from the commencement, and to supply the
student with the most important ieatures of its development and
progress to the beginning of the twentieth century. In doing
so the utmost care has been taken to omit no name which is
worthy of mention in a work of the kind, and to give the chief
details regarding each in a due proportion.

The General Historical Sketch, though lengthy, is by no means
adequate to the greatness of the subject. It is suggestive rather
than comprehensive. It will be clear to the student that in its
treatment it was impossible to avoid the mention of matters of
fact and surmise, which are repeated, in their places, in the body
of the book.

In compiling the biographical notices, the author has en-
deavoured to be accurate and impartial. As regards the relative
space allotted to each author, the justice meted out may be open
to question in some cases, but the aim has been to differentiate
as far as possible between major and minor poets. In a com-
parative study of the works of poets of the two classes, however,
it will frequently be found that the relative claims to distinction
do not rest so much on the intrinsic merit of the poems as upon
their length. Taken as poetry, some of the shortest works of the
so-called minor poets have a greater claim to immortality, and
sometimes even a greater certainty of it, than some of the epics
of those whose names are as household words. It occasionally
happens, too, that the biographical features are in themselves
worthy of exhaustive treatment. To the earnest student of
history no department of literature is more attractive and useful
than biography. It conveys instruction in a form both simple

viii PREFACE

and pleasing. It improves the mind by means of example,
which is so often more effective than precept. The greatest
object the author hopes to achieve by means of the present
volume is the incentive it should afford to the study of greater
and ampler works which bear upon the same subject.

The choice of selections from the works of British Poets has
been made with a view to variety in subject and treatment rather
than comparative excellence. The student will remember that
no poet can be justly judged, or his work fairly estimated, by
means of mere extracts. Care has been taken in some cases in
the present work to avoid the reproduction of pieces which are
widely identified with the poets' names.

The author hereby offers his cordial thanks to all who have
given him permission to quote from their writings. He hopes
that, if there be any infringement of copyright, it may be
forgiven as unintentional.

The author has carefully abstained from discussing matters
of a controversial character, whether social, political, or religious.
His aim has been to state facts with impartiality, rather than to
express opinions on disputed questions.

One feature which is not always attended to with precision
in histories of English literature will be apparent to the reader.
The poets of English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh nationalities
are kept, where possible, apart.

For much valuable information and criticism the author is
indebted to Mr. Chambers' Cyclop&dia of English Literature,
Warton's History of English Poetry, Johnson's Lives of the
Poets, and the works of Mr. Spalding, Dr. Collier, Dr. Craik,
Professor Dowden, Dr. P. W. Joyce, and Mr. Stopford Brooke.
The Rev. Robert Williams' Biographical Dictionary of Eminent
Welshmen has been of service in the selection of poets of Welsh
nationality.

The author wishes to record his grateful acknowledgments
to Dr. John Corbett, M.A., LL.D., Member of the Senate of the
University of Dublin, for his kindness in correcting the proof-
sheets of this work.

F. ST. JOHN CORBETT.

THE RECTORY,

ST. GEORGE IN THE EAST,

1904.

CONTENTS

A GENERAL HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ORIGIN AND

PROGRESS OF BRITISH POETRY I

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER - 42

MINOR POETS BEFORE CHAUCER - 65

GEOFFREY CHAUCER - 69

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY - 84

MINOR POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY - 88

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY - 94

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY - 13!

GREATER POETS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY - - 149

MINOR POETS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY - - 227

GREATER POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - - 253

MINOR POETS OF 'THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - 359

GREATER POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY - - 387

MINOR POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY - 563

APPENDIX :

I. THE SHAKESPEARE-BACON CONTROVERSY - - 604

II. THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF SHAKESPEARE'S NAME - 6l6

in. POETS' CORNER - - 619

IV. THE SONNET - 622

V. POETS-LAUREATE - - 624

INDEX - 627

ix

A GENERAL HISTORICAL SKETCH

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF BRITISH POETRY

THE earliest specimens of poetry found in the British Islands
belong to the fifth century. They consist of some fragments of
Irish verse, contained in the Annalists. Every kind of learning
was held in high esteem by the ancient Irish people, and most of
their lore was written in books. Dr. P. W. Joyce, in one of his
excellent histories of Ireland, tells us that ' after the time of
St. Patrick everything that was considered worthy of being pre-
served was committed to writing, so that manuscripts gradually
accumulated all through the country. But in the dark time of
the Danish ravages, and during the troubled centuries that fol-
lowed the Anglo-Norman invasion, the manuscript collections
were gradually dispersed, and a large portion lost or destroyed.'
A considerable number of manuscripts, however, are still
extant, the two most important collections being those in the
libraries of Trinity College, Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy.
These collections contain a large number of manuscripts ranging
in date from the sixth century to the present day. The largest
of the manuscript books is the Book of Leinster, though it is not
the most ancient. It is written on vellum, and contains four
hundred and ten pages, on which are inscribed about one thousand
pieces relating to Ireland, some of which are written in verse.
The Psalter of Cashel, said to be the most ancient existing manu-
script of Irish literature, is a collection of metrical legends written
by a man who combined in his own person the two offices of King
of Munster and Bishop of Cashel. A portion of the book is now

I

2 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

to be seen in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It was compiled
towards the end of the ninth century.

In those early days the poets played no small part in the
education and amusement of the people. Few of the general
public were able to read, and consequently they were in a great
measure dependent on professional poets and story-tellers, who
recited their pieces from memory. ' At every festive gathering,'
says Dr. Joyce, ' among the lowest as well as the highest, one of
these story-tellers was sure to be present, who was now and then
called upon to repeat a tale or a poem for the amusement of the
company. And as soon as he stood up, these rough men ceased
their noisy revels, and listened with deep delight to some tale of
the heroes of old. A harper was also present, who charmed the
company with his delightful Irish airs ; or if it was a gathering of
the lower classes, more likely a piper.'

Dr. Craik has pointed out that as the forms of the original
English alphabetical characters are the same as those of the
Irish, it is probable that it was from Ireland the English first
derived their knowledge of letters. Certain it seems to be that
for some ages Ireland was the chief seat of learning in Christian
Europe ; and the most distinguished scholars who appeared in
other countries were, as a rule, either Irish by birth or had re-
ceived their education in Irish schools. Further, we are informed
by the Venerable Bede that in his day, the earlier part of the
eighth century, it was customary for his English fellow-country-
men of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, to retire for
study and devotion to Ireland, where, he adds, they were all
hospitably received, and supplied gratuitously with food, with
books, and with instruction.

Welsh poetry stands next to Irish in the matter of antiquity.
In Wales also the profession of the bard was held in high esteem.
The poems of Taliesin, the Merddins, and other poets of the sixth
century are still in existence. The Triads, some of which are
attributed to Welsh writers of the thirteenth century, are sets of
historical events and moral proverbs, arranged in groups of three.
Both in these, and in the ballads of the bards, one of the chief
heroes is the great King Arthur, whose prowess against the
Saxons was so noted in those far-off days.

It must not be supposed that either the Irish or the Welsh
poets of those early days either wrote or recited in anything even

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 3

remotely resembling the language which we now call English.
The Irish wrote in Gaelic, and the Welsh in Cymric, each of these
being a section of the Celtic language, which was that of the
earliest inhabitants of the British Islands. The first Irishman
who wrote verses in English was Michael of Kildare, who flourished
in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and is supposed to
have been the author of the much-quoted satirical poem entitled
The Land of Cockayne.

Next in chronological order stand the earliest fragments of
English verse; of which there exist written remains dating from
the seventh century at least, the English language having been
known by that name since the fifth century.

The few existing specimens of the Scottish Gaelic bear a much
later date than the ancient Irish ballads. The celebrated James
Macpherson published what purported to be the poems of Ossian
as translations from Gaelic manuscripts as old as the fourth
century. These are now known to the world as merely clever
literary forgeries. A narrative poem, called the Albania Duan,
is assigned to the eleventh century. The earliest fragment of
Scottish poetry is given, though without a date, by Mr. Chambers.
The fragment has been preserved by Wyntoun. It runs as

follows :

Quhen Alysander cure kyng was dede

That Scotland led in luwe and le (love and law),

Away wes sons of ale and brede (always was plenty) ,

Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle ;

Oure golde wes changyd into lede,

Cryst borne into virgynyte,

Succor Scotland and remede,

That stad is in perplexyte (standing).

King Alexander died on the i6th of March, 1286.

Mr. Sharon Turner, the historian of the Anglo-Saxons, has
calculated that, if the English language were divided into a
hundred parts, sixty would be Saxon, and Archbishop Trench
agrees with this estimate, which is said to be verified by the vocab-
ulary of our English Bible, as well as by the plays of Shakespeare.
But on the other hand, as is pointed out by Mr. Chambers,
Professor Max Miiller states that the Norman elements in English
have a decided preponderance. The Professor cites M. Thom-
merel, who counted every word in our dictionaries, and estab-
lished the fact that the number of Teutonic or Saxon words in
English amounts to 13,230, whereas there are 29,853 traceable to

i — 2

4 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

a Latin source. It has been pointed out that this disparity
arises from the philologist looking at the words apart from the
stem or grammar of the language. The great influx of Neo-Latin
and other vocables in the course of the nation's progress is un-
doubted, but, as Professor Max Miiller admits, in a scientific
classification the English must be ranked as Saxon. The change
from Anglo-Saxon into English may be briefly said to embrace,
in successive stages, Anglo-Saxon, Semi-Saxon, Old or Early
English, Middle English, and Modern English, or the language
which is now spoken.

The language which the Angles and Saxons introduced into
this country when they came over from the Continent and took
possession of the greater part of South Britain, in the fifth and
sixth centuries, may fairly be said to have formed the foundation
of the English language of the present day. There were at least
two respects in which it differed from modern English. It was
in the first place an unmixed language, and in the second it was a
synthetic rather than an analytic language. Thus the grammar
and construction of our national speech are derived from our
Northern invaders, and now, after fourteen centuries, their
language, enriched from various and distant sources, has become
the speech of fifty millions of people, to be found in all quarters
of the globe. The country took its name of England from a
leading branch of the invaders, called Angles, while the new
language was called Anglo-Saxon.

This language was a branch of the Teutonic. The Teutons
were a people who occupied a considerable portion of central
Europe at the same time that the West was overpowered by the
Celts. The Anglo-Saxon language continued with but slight
change to be the language of England until the eleventh century.
During the five centuries which preceded the eleventh it received
additions from the Latin, which was introduced by Christian
missionaries, and from the Danish, which was a kindred dialect
of the Teutonic. The latter additions were made by the vast
numbers of Danes who came over from Denmark and endeavoured
to effect settlements in England. Thus, to quote the words of
Mr. Stopford Brooke, ' the language written in the year 700 is the
same as that in which the prose of the Bible is written, just as
much as the tree planted a hundred years ago is the same tree
to-day. It is this sameness of language, as well as the sameness

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 5

of national spirit, which makes our literature one literature for
1,200 years.'

The earliest compositions that appear in the Anglo-Saxon
tongue are poetical in form. The y are almost always impassioned
in tone, and usually combine the elements of instruction with
' that exercise of the imagination which has been in every age
one of the chief characteristics of poetry.' Yet the portions pre-
served are but scanty, and the poetry, which is fairly described
by historians as ' inferior to the Northern in depth of feeling,' is
rude in structure, and frequently deficient in imagery and fancy.
In many cases, moreover, the dates and authorship are either
decidedly doubtful or altogether unknown. The versification is
abrupt, and the rules uncertain.

It can be stated with positive certainty, however, that in its
earliest stages poetry was entirely dependent for its character on
alliteration and accentuation. Anglo-Saxon poetry, like Icelandic,
is entirely alliterative. It was not until after the Norman
Conquest that alliteration gave place to rhyme. This form of
ornate writing consists in the recurrence of words or syllables
beginning with the same letter, as in the well-known line :
By apt alliteration's artful aid.

Its artful aid is now but rarely used by poets, though it is by no
means obsolete, and, if not overdone, adds to the sweetness and
harmony of numbers. The change from alliteration to rhyme
was no doubt largely the result of the influence of the French
versification, which has always been based on rhyme. The old
alliterative method maintained its ground amongst the masses of
the people, and can boast the earliest great work of imagination
in our poetical literature, The Vision of Piers Plowman, which
is the first of ' the three great allegorical works which have suc-
cessively gained the ear of the English people.' After that date
—the latter half of the fourteenth century — alliteration ceased to
be observed as a fixed rule of poetry.

The Anglo-Saxon gleemen, or minstrels, were very important
personages. To them we are indebted for the ' oral, transmis-
sion ' upon which the perpetuation of poetical pieces depended
before the age of manuscripts or books. The following descrip-
tion is given by Wright of the verse in which the gleemen, or
minstrels, sang :

' The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was neither modulated ac-

6 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

cording to foot-measure, like that of the Greeks and Romans, nor
written with rhymes, like that of many modern languages. Its
chief and universal characteristic was a very regular alliteration,
so arranged that in every couplet there should be two principal
words in the first line beginning with the same letter, which letter
must also be the initial of the first word, on which the stress of
the voice falls in the second line. . The only approach to a metrical
system yet discovered is that two risings and two fallings of the
voice seem necessary to each perfect line. Two distinct measures
are met with, a shorter and a longer, both commonly mixed
together in the same poem ; the former being used for the ordinary
narrative, and the latter adopted when the poet sought after
greater dignity. In the manuscript the Saxon poetry is always
written continuously, like prose ; but the division of the lines is
always marked by a point.'

Rhyme was spoken of contemptuously by Milton, who referred
to it as ' the jingling sound of like endings,' a statement which
would suggest the thought that it did not meet with popular
favour for some considerable time after its introduction into
English poetry.

As an example of the earliest form, dependent on alliteration
and accent, we may give the following couplet from a war-song —

Wigu wintrum geong
Wordum maelde,1

which may be translated :

Warrior of winters young
With words spake.

The accentuation of the words depended upon the thought.
In these earliest poems more attention is paid to the matter than
to the manner. Unrhymed and alliterative verse lasted until the
reign of John. It was revived in the days of Edward III. and
Richard II. The blending of alliteration with rhyme continued
until the sixteenth century.

The poetical works of the Anglo-Saxons are not the most
attractive of their literary relics. They have been pronounced
*' lacking in the pathos which inspires the bardic songs of the
vanquished Cymrians, the exulting imagination which reigns in
the Sagas of the North, and the dramatic life which animates,
everywhere, the legendary tales that light up the dim beginnings
of a nation's history.' But it has also been admitted that the
1 Professor Stopford Brooke's English Literature Primer.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 7

literature which thus neither excites by images of barbarism nor
soothes by the refinements of art possesses claims of its own to
admiration and respect in the loftiness and far-sightedness of its
aims, its moral and religious purity, and the evident desire to
improve the character of their countrymen which animated its
authors, who, as a rule, were the best-instructed men of their
times.

The earliest specimen of an English or Anglo-Saxon poem is
called The Song of the Traveller.1 It is said to have been written
in the fifth century by a man who had lived in the fourth. But
the poem is little more than a list of names of the places to which
the minstrel went with the Goths. With it may be classed the
Battle of Finnesburg, Dear's Complaint, the Lay of Beowulf, and
two fragments of an epic entitled Waldhere. Of these Beowulf
is the largest and most interesting. It contains more than six
thousand lines, and is thought to be much older than the manu-
script of it which survives. It is a Norse saga, and illustrates, in
a highly romantic and picturesque manner, some of the early
Gothic customs and superstitions. The use of metaphors is
common in the poem, but it contains only five similes — a lack of
the latter being a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. This
poem, which takes rank amongst English poetical works as the
oldest epic, is indeed the oldest poem of an epic form in Europe.
It is thought that it was written in the fifth century. It was
edited, in the form in which we now have it, in the eighth century.
Mention may also be made here of the fragment of Judith, the
date and authorship of which are unknown, but as it was found
in the same manuscript as Beowulf, it is just possible that it may
have been composed at the same time.

All the above-mentioned poems were written on the Con-
tinent before the emigrations to England. The first English
poem actually written on English soil is a paraphrase of the
Scriptures, the author of which was Gedmon, originally a cow-
herd and afterwards a monk at Whitby in Northumbria. The
story of his ' call ' to the work of a poet is given in the sketch
of his life, and is intensely interesting. It is believed that he
died in 680 or thereabouts, and that the Paraphrase was com-
pleted about ten years earlier. It has been stated by some his-
torians that there were two poets of this name, the elder of whom
1 Sometimes called The Gleeman's Song.

8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

composed some lines on the Creation which are acknowledged to
be amongst the oldest existing specimens of Anglo-Saxon, the
younger being the author of the Paraphrase.

Of the merits or demerits of a composition such as Caedmon's,
viewing it as an example of English poetry, it is not possible
for the modern critic or historian to say much. It is valuable to
the student of English literature as an example of the diction of
its age, but for all practical purposes of criticism it defies censure
as surely as it fails to elicit praise or admiration. It is due,
perhaps, to what has been aptly termed our own inevitable
ignorance of the earlier methods that we do not look with hope
for much evidence of culture or literary grace amongst the
poems of the Anglo-Saxons. But when we consider the cir-
cumstances under which they lived, we cannot but be surprised
at the number and magnitude of the literary relics which they
have bequeathed to us.

Amongst the writers of Anglo-Latin poetry may be mentioned
Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborn, who flourished in the latter half
of the seventh century. He was the most distinguished pupil
of Adrian, and the founder of the abbey at Malmesbury. He
translated the Book of Psalms, and wrote a treatise in hexam-
eters— De Laude Virginitatis — as well as a poem on the Seven
Cardinal Virtues. The Venerable Bede also wrote in Latin.
He is more celebrated for prose than for poetry, his metrical
compositions being ' correct but lifeless.' Alcuin, another great
writer of prose, was also prolific in Latin verse, and is chiefly
celebrated for his Elegy on the destruction of Lindisfarne by the
Danes. In the tenth century the list was added to by Fride-
gode's Life of Si. Wilfrid and Wolstan's Life of St. Swithun.
Latin verses were also written by Cuthbert, Boniface, and
Columban.

Our literary history, after the death of Bede (or Baeda), cannot
be said to contain any great names until it brings before us that
of the amiable and learned Alfred the Great, whose love of verse,
coupled with the capacity which he evinced for remembering the
songs of the gleemen, would alone entitle him to honourable
mention in a history of English poetry. His chief claim to be
remembered, however, lies in the fact that he was the Father of
English prose.

After the death of Csedmon, our poetry, though partly secular,

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 9

was in the main religious in tone. The spread of the monasteries
would account in a large measure for this. What is left of the
poetry of this period is now to be found in the Vercelli Book and
the Exeter Book, so called from the places in which the manu-
scripts are now kept. In these are to be found some poems by
Cynewulf, the most notable of the Northern poets of the time.
He was, it appears, a minstrel at the Court of one of the North-
umbrian kings, and was exiled in the eighth century. In these
valuable repertories are also to be found metrical translations
of the Psalms, hymns and prayers in verse, and Didactic and
Gnomic poems. ' One fine fragment in which Death speaks to
man, and describes the low and hateful and doorless house of
which he keeps the key, does not belong to these books, and with
the few English verses Baeda made when he was dying, tells us
how stern was the thought of our fathers about the grave.
But, stern as these fragments are, the Old English religious poetry
always passes on to speak of a brighter world. Thus we are told,
in the Ode in the Saxon Chronicle, that King Eadgar " left this
weak life, and chose for himself another light, sweet and fair." '
War poems, such as the Song of Brunanburgh, written in 938,
and the Song of the Fight of Maldon, written in 998, afford us
examples of a class of poetry which was also much in vogue
at this time.

Athelstan's Song of Victory, the date of which is about 938, is
contained in the Saxon Chronicle.

Mention may be made here of the Song of Canute, composed
as he was rowing one day on the river which flows past the
minster of Ely. The reverend monks were chanting a hymn as
the King passed by, whereupon His Majesty composed the song
which we have given in the text, and which obtained great
popularity, it may be, on account of its author as much as for
its intrinsic merit.

In the year 1066 Saxon England was invaded and conquered
by William, Duke of Normandy. This event produced consider-
able changes in the learning and literature of the nation. A
period of decay may be said to have then set in, though its germs
had existed from the commencement, and out of this decay
grew and developed the English language which we speak to-day.
Saxon scholarship, indeed, had been on the decline since the
death of Alfred the Great. Even the bishops of the time made

io A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

a poor show as men of letters, and the Conqueror deposed some
of them in order to make room for Continental scholars. Such
learning as there was had become the monopoly of ecclesiastics,
whose professional language was Latin. As a natural outcome
of this, we find a large number of works written in that language
during the centuries following the Conquest.

At this point our attention must turn to that vigorous and
imaginative school of poetry which arose in the Norman-French
tongue, and was the model of the earliest efforts in our own.
The Norman Romance rose and fell with Chivalry.

A group of dialects sprung out of decayed Latin, of which
two stand out as leading ones. In these some Teutonic additions
from the Franks formed another ingredient. The two dialects
were called the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil. The former
was in vogue in the South, and the latter in the North of France.
The Langue d'Oc was nearer akin to Italian and Spanish than
to modern French. The poets who wrote in it were called
Troubadours, or Inventors. It had but a small effect on the
poetry of our country, though it became the favourite model
of the early poets of Italy. It ' blazed out a brief day of glory,
and was trampled down with all its lovely garlands of song by
Montford and his crusaders, and now exists only as the rude
patois of the province that bears its name.'

The Langue d'Oil has developed into modern French, and was,
originally that which we speak of as Norman-French. It was
brought to perfection in Normandy, where it was first used in
the composition of important literary works. The influence
which it wrought upon our literature was considerable. Its
poets were known as Trouveres, and the style which they favoured
was the narrative or short story. They also indulged in chival-
rous romances, which were as a rule longer and more serious
than the narrative poems. ' The lays sung by the Trouveres of
Northern France in praise of knights and knighthood/ says Dr.
Collier, ' were the delight of the Norman soldiers who fought at
Hastings ; and when those soldiers had settled as conquerors
on the English soil, what was more natural than that they
should still love the old Norman lays, and that a new generation
of poets should learn in the Normanized island to sing in Norman
too ?'

Then followed what has been aptly termed ' a confusion of

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY n

tongues.' The men of learning still cultivated Latin as an
elegant accomplishment. Under the influence of the minstrels
' a more natural, though irregular/ school of poetry was formed,
' the application of whose accentual system of verse to Latin,
in defiance of quantity, gave rise to the Leonine verse, which
was used for epigrams, for satires, and also for the hymns of
the Church.' Leonine verse was naturalized in Europe by the
end of the eleventh century. The name is ascribed to verses
rhymed as well as accentual. Again, to the earlier part of
the reign of Edward II. belongs the frivolous Macaronic poetry,
which is notable for its mixture of different languages. The
following verse contains a medley of Latin, French, and English :

Quant homme deit parleir, videat quae verba loquatur,
Seu covent aver, ne stultior inveneatur.
Quando quis loquitur, bote resoun reste therynne,
Derisum patitur, and lutel so shall he wynne.

It is not to be wondered at that this confusion of tongues led
to the corruption of them all, and consequently none of them
were spoken as correctly as when they were kept apart.

We have very few English metrical remains, besides the
Chronicles and romances, from the period between the Conquest
and the middle of the twelfth century. The few we do possess,
moreover, are not of very great value, though they possess not
a little real interest as antiquities, and sometimes as historical
records.

The Old English period of our literary history began with the
reign of Henry III. A proclamation of this monarch, issued in
1258, is looked upon by some authorities as the first monument
of Old English. The Surtees Psalter may be looked upon as
marking the boundary line. Its issue dates from 1250.

The chief feature of the latter half of the thirteenth and of
the first half of the fourteenth centuries is the popularity enjoyed
by the metrical Romance. Sir Tristrem, Havelock, and King
Horn were written before 1300. We possess ' more than a score '
of those written during the fourteenth century. ' It is impos-
sible,' says Mr. Chambers, ' to discuss them all at length. They
defy epitome, and are not easily represented by extracts, nor
is a general criticism likely to be very profitable.' The great
majority of them are translations from the French. Three of
them have English heroes — Richard Coeur de Lion, Bevis of
Southampton, and Guy of Warwick.

12 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

With the poetry of the immediate predecessors of Chaucer
we have dealt in the text. The chief were Minot, Langland,
and Gower.

It is almost trite to say that the real history of English litera-
ture begins with Chaucer. Just as Dante was the representative
of the best that could be found in the religion and politics of
Italy, so is Chaucer the embodiment of all that was excellent
in the intellectual life of his own country. He it was who by
his writings ' rescued the English language from the hotch-
potch of Saxon patois, Norman-French, and monk Latin ' into
which it had degenerated, and ' wove it into a living and har-
monious whole, whilst in his fidelity to life and in the breath of
his human sympathy he gave that tone to English literature
which is the noblest feature of its glory in the past, and the
greatest guarantee of the permanence of its influence in the future.'

It has been pointed out by many writers that any great mental
outburst is the result of pent-up political feeling. Just as this
may be traced in the imposing array of Greek writers who grew
out of the removal of ' the overshadowing malific influence of
the Persian power,' so is it also traceable in the writings of
Alfred the Great and the scholarly men with whom he was
surrounded on the subjugation of the Danes, and in the
Chaucerian period by the desire to escape from Latin as a
language and a ruling power.

' The Greek language, civilization, and refinement had been
obliterated by Roman rule ; Roman civilization and refinement
by the sluggish ignorance and sensuality of the monastic orders
in the dark ages. At last, under the reaction from great military
pressure, Alfred reduced to order the phonetic colloquial language
of his people. With no books but those of the ecclesiastics, no
dictionaries (though it is stated that Bishop Asser wrote a
glossary for his Boethius), and with no official scribes, as the
Greeks had, he produced by his critical translations, not only
a new written language, but one containing historical matter
of the deepest interest, including all that was then known of
the geography of the world. But the language was hard, the
characters far from easy, and the students few.' So writes
Dr. Phene in a powerful essay on the influence of Chaucer on
the language and literature of England.1

1 Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 13

He goes on to show that this was the heterogeneous state
of mental culture which Chaucer had to contend with when
the Anglo-Saxon tongue had to be ' Englished.' The national
mind being destitute of any literary knowledge beyond what
may be termed the ecclesiastical, ' he took up the most popular
feature in which that knowledge found its external expression,
and produced a dramatic and picturesque effect through his
pilgrims (pilgrimage being then the grand feature of the age),
tending to instruction, moral bearing, and lasting mental pictures
of entertainment, incorporating the medieval play-loving feature
with a lofty purpose, and through an attractive medium. His
sagacity did not stop at this. It can hardly be supposed that,
any more than Homer, 'he had a preceptor, nor an example
to go by ; but, led into a channel -which resulted in great good
to the prosperity of his country, he put all this graphic matter
into verse. Prose is a long, laborious, and heavy process, suited
only to a thoroughly understood language and subject. Poetry,
from its shorter sentences, apt allusions, pungent satire, vivacity,
and general powers, possesses a grasp which secures the memory
in the most enticing form, and when brilliant, joyous, and
descriptively picturesque, enables the unlearned to take hold
with delight on a subject, and produces an unforgettable enjoy-
ment. But beyond this', its power over words, its grammatical
constructions and variations, its musical cadence, metre, and
rhythm, render it, whether the Homeric or Chaucerian poems
are in question, a means of framing a language, grammaticizing,
and conveying instruction, particularly that of history, which
no other medium possesses. As the Homeric poems formed the
basis of the Greek language, so the Chaucerian are the sub-
stratum of the English ; and if, as was the case, no language
in ancient times equalled the Greek, so certainly in modern
times no language equals the English.'

The rhyming chronicles and the Norman metrical romances
were the only models which Chaucer had in his own language,
but he had the benefit of the great Italian models, and in his
earlier works may be traced some proofs of the tendency of infant
literature to translation. He had also the advantages of the
extended knowledge which the intercourse of nations, the
results of the Crusades, and the wars of Edward III. had com-
municated to Western Europe. Nevertheless, though the

14 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

abundance of his knowledge, the novelty of his ideas and images,
and the beauty and cadence of his verse cannot have failed to
create a deep impression on the literary aspirants of his age,
his coming was not followed by any immediate improvement
in English poetry in general. Well has Warton compared his
advent to that of ' a genial day in spring/ whose promise of
coming sunshine is too often succeeded by a return of cheerless
weather, a cheerlessness which is all the more felt in this case
through contrast with the brilliant sunlight shed abroad by one
whom Hallam has classed with Dante and Petrarca in the great
triumvirate of the Middle Ages.

Campbell points to the stern repression of novelty by the
Lollards as a cause of blight in the poetic blossom. John de
Wycliffe had already lighted the torch of the Reformation,
which was not without a powerful influence on the evolution
of our literature, and Chaucer was one of those who favoured
the movement.

Of Chaucer's contemporaries Gower is undoubtedly the most
literary. His verse is polished and fluent, though somewhat
archaic in form. Though possessed of unquestionable powers of
dramatic description, he is curbed by rigid restraints, and never
indulges in ' that luxury — the greatest of all to a true poetic
mind — the luxury of unbridled sentiment.'

The fourteenth century is the most important in the intel-
lectual history of European nations. It is the period of transi-
tion from the ages of Chivalry and Feudalism to the Revival
of Letters and the Reformation. Chivalry, indeed, as a political
institution at least, was slowly but surely breathing its last.
The English character was rapidly assuming that insularity
which followed close upon the victories of Crecy and Poitiers.
The vernacular language was beginning to take its proper place
in the nation's literature, and the dawn of modern ' English '
began to show more clearly.

Many Chivalrous Romances were now added to the increasing
store-house of English literature. Though Chaucer indulged
in some good-natured and good-humoured satire at their expense,
it must be acknowledged that they evinced no small amount
of intrinsic merit, and even Chaucer himself was in some measure
affected by them, both as to spirit and diction.

One of the greatest of Chaucer's contemporaries was the

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 15

author of The Vision of Piers Plowman, which was completed
in 1362. The language of this strange composition wears an
air of antiquity beyond its actual age. It led to many imitations,
the best of which was entitled Piers Plowman's Creed, of which
the author was a Wycliffite. From the death of Chaucer in
1400, nearly two hundred years elapsed without producing
any poet who could be compared to him, though those two
centuries were more enlightened than the time in which the
Father of English poetry lived and wrote.

The progress of learning and of taste in Scotland was marked
by the foundation of the Universities of St. Andrews and
Glasgow, the former by Bishop Wardlaw in 1411, and the latter
by Bishop Turnbull in 1450. And even for England a better
day was fast approaching. The feudal age was passing rapidly
away. The expedition of Charles VIII. of France into Italy
was undertaken in 1494, and this enterprise is looked upon by
Hallam as the turning-point of subsequent events, and the
mark of the commencement of modern history. ' All things
wore the appearance of the approach of a period of extensive
progress and improvement among civilized mankind ; but the
vestiges of rudeness still clung around the age, and the poetry
of England had yet received no watering.'

The fifteenth century is the era of the beginning of what is
technically known in history as the Renaissance, or the Revival
of Arts and Letters in Europe. The multiplication of printed
books, and more especially of the Latin and Greek classics,
tended greatly to increase the learning of Europe, and introduced
new words into the English language which the poets were not
slow to make use of. Literature in general began to improve,
and a century after the death of Chaucer the better day began
to make its presence felt. Speaking of the influence of the
Italian Revival, Mr. Stopford Brooke says : ' Such an interest
was made and deepened by the revival of letters which arose
after 1453 in Italy, and we have seen that before the last two
decades of the fifteenth century many Englishmen had gone to
Italy to read and study the old Greek authors on whom the
scholars driven from Constantinople by the Turks were lecturing
in the schools of Florence. The New Learning increased in
England, and passed on into the sixteenth century, until it
decayed for a time in the violence of the religious struggle.

16 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

But we had now begun to do our own work as translators of
the classics, and the young English scholars whom the Italian
revival had awakened filled year after year the land with
English versions of the ancient writers of Rome and Greece.
It is in this growing influence of the great classic models
of literature that we find the gathering together of another
of the sources of that great Elizabethan literature which seems
to arise so suddenly, but which had, in reality, been long pre-
paring.' It has been justly remarked that while Scotland,
notwithstanding the troubles which marked the reigns of the
Jameses, was redeeming the poetical character of the fifteenth
century from the discredit thrown on it by the comparative
feebleness of the art in England, her living tongue was, until
very near the end of this period, used in versified compositions
only. Scottish prose does not appear, in any literary shape,
till the beginning of the sixteenth century, and its earliest
efforts were merely translations.

The poetry of Scotland was strongly marked by certain
Celtic elements which have been classified by Mr. Stopford
Brooke. They may be briefly stated as containing (i) the
love of wild nature for its own sake, (2) the love of colour, and
(3) a certain mode of witty and coarse humour. ' Few things
are really more different than the humour of Chaucer and the
humour of Dunbar, than the humour of Cowper and the humour
of Burns.'

The national elements in Scottish verse are equally strong.
The nation was oppressed, and felt the need of self-assertion.
For nearly forty years they were engaged in self-defence against
the efforts of England to subjugate them. Such circumstances
could not fail to result in a strong assertion of national in-
dependence. The love of country is further evinced in the
true descriptions of local scenery which elevate and beautify
the verses of Scottish bards. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and even
Milton indulge in descriptive scenes which are not completely
English, but ' in Scotland it is always the scenery of their own
land that the poets describe. Even when they are imitating
Chaucer they do not imitate his conventional landscape. They
put in a Scotch landscape.'

The art of printing had been known and practised in Germany
for nearly thirty years before it was introduced into England

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 17

by William Caxton, in the year 1474. The first printing-press
whose types were inked on English soil was set up in the Almonry
of Westminster, where the monks used to distribute alms to
the poor. ' As we write the name of Caxton/ says Dr. Collier,
' a grave and beardless face, with an expression somewhat
akin to sadness, rises from the past, looking calmly out from
the descending lappets of the hood, which was the fashionable
headdress of his day. All honour to the memory of the Father
of the English Press !' A wondrous revolution now took place.
For twenty years or thereabouts Caxton practised the new art
with vigour and success. Work after work was issued from
the press, until, in spite of the cumbersome nature of the unde-
veloped machinery, he had himself caused the publication of
about sixty-five volumes. The third stage in the evolution of
literary history was thus entered upon, when the manuscript
gave place to the printed book, even as oral transmission had
been superseded by the use of the pen. The art was not intro-
duced into Scotland until the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the oldest of the extant books, a collection of ballads and
metrical romances, bearing the date of 1508. On the death of
Caxton, Wynkin de Worde, one of his assistants, continued the
good work, and to his press are assigned four hundred and eight
works. Thus did the new art begin to grow.

Of those who wrote in the mother-tongue in the fifteenth
century the most numerous were the poets, ' by courtesy so
called.' Few of them, however, established any claim to special
remembrance. Indeed, they are now referred to as 'a crowd
of worthless and forgotten versifiers that fill up the annals of
our national minstrelsy from Chaucer to Lord Surrey.' Ritson,
in his Bibliographia Poetica, gives the names of seventy who
were more or less recognised as poets at this time. But the
first name of any note after Chaucer is that of Thomas Occleve,
who flourished about the year 1420. Most of his poems remain
in manuscript, though Ritson tells us that ' six of peculiar
stupidity ' were selected and published by Dr. Askew in 1796.
There is no doubt that Occleve was personally acquainted with
Chaucer, to whom he constantly refers as his ' master and
poetic father.' But Dr. Craik affirms that he seems to have
gained no more from his admirable model than ' some initiation
in that smoothness and regularity of diction of which Chaucer's

i8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

writings set the first great example/ and Warton tells us that
the very titles of his pieces indicate the poverty and frigidity of
his genius.

Of a different class were the writings of John Lydgate, the
monk of Bury, who must be accounted the most famous versifier
of his age. A selection from his minor poems was edited by
Mr. Halliwell, and printed for the Percy Society in 1840. ' His
muse/ says Warton, in his History of English Poetry, ' was of
universal access ; and he was not only the poet of the monastery,
but of the world in general. If a disguising was intended
by the company of goldsmiths, a mask before His Majesty at
Eltham, a May-game for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a
mumming before the Lord Maj^or, a procession of pageants
from the Creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, or a
carol for the Coronation, Lydgate was consulted and gave the
poetry.'

The reigns of Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry VII.,
embracing the period from 1461 to 1509, were destitute of
true poetry, though there was no lack of minor poets. It is
worthy of note that at this time the most remarkable contri-
butions to our poetical literature were afforded by a race of
Scottish poets, such as Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas, King
James I. of Scotland, Wynton, Holland, and Henry the Minstrel,
commonly called Blind Hany.

The poetical literature of England during the first half of the
sixteenth century may be said to mark th( dawn of a new day.
Amongst the poets who belong to the reign of Henry VII. the
most remarkable is Stephen Hawes, whose best-remembered
work is entitled The Pastime of Pleasure, or History of Grand
Amour and La Belle Pucelle. This poem is described by Warton
as the only effort of imagination and invention which had
appeared since the time of Chaucer. That critic also praises
it for its touches of romance and allegory. Lydgate's writings
supplied Hawes with a model, and it is allowed by Dr. Craik
that ' Lydgate and Hawes may stand together as perhaps the
two writers who in the century and a half that followed the
death of Chaucer, contributed most to carry forward the regu-
lation and modernization of the language which he began.'
The transition from Middle English to Modern English was
gradually taking place, and was now, indeed, nearly accom-

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 19

plished. The youth, or adolescence, of our existing speech
had lasted from the middle of the fourteenth century, and the
middle of the sixteenth was to see the dawn of its manhood.

The poetry of John Skelton must also be noted as amongst
the best which was produced in this reign and the earlier part
of that of Henry VIII. A brilliant and dauntless satirist,
he bequeathed his name to the style in which he wrote. This
writer ' graduated as poet laureate (a degree in grammar, including
versification and rhetoric) at Oxford before 1490,' and was
tutor to the young prince who became Henry VIII. He was
called by Erasmus Britannicamm literarum deciis et lumen —
the Light and Ornament of English Letters. Yet it must not be
supposed that the best in this age was good. Though the Latin
verses of Skelton are distinguished by their excellence, his English
poems are not remarkable for any greater merit than facility
of expression and unfailing vivacity. Alexander Barclay was
the author of one of the most celebrated of the classical transla-
tions with which the literature of the sixteenth century abounds.
The work is called The Ship of Fools, and is from the German
of Sebastian Brandt. It is valuable as an index to the English
manners and customs of the day, though the versification is
poor. John Heywood, called the Epigrammatist, was also of
this date.

A new poetical literature, rightly described as a revival of
the higher poetry, came into being when the Earl of Surrey and
Sir Thomas Wyatt began to write. They may be said to divide
the honours of the first half of the sixteenth century. The
former was the first writer of our present form of English blank
verse, ' the suggestion of which he probably took from the earliest
Italian example of that form of poetry, a translation of the First
and Fourth Books of the JEneid by the Cardinal Hippolito de'
Medici (or, as some say, by Francesco Maria Molza), which was
published at Venice in 1541.' In a collection of Surrey's poems,
published in 1557, there is a translation of these two books.
This is, however, only the first instance of a new form of blank
verse, another form of the same kind of poetry being found in
the Ormulum. To Surrey belongs yet another distinction,
inasmuch as he is regarded as the first English classical poet.

Sir Thomas Wyatt, although his style is inferior to that of
Surrey, is distinguished in history as the author of the first

2 — 2

20 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Sonnet written in the English language. It is a translation of a
Sonnet of Petrarca. He wrote about thirty in all, only one of
which is not in the ' legitimate,' or Petrarcan form. Mr. Stone,
in his valuable »' Introduction ' to his collection of Sonnets of
the Sacred year, gives us a history and explanation of this form
of poetry which will repay the student who peruses it carefully.
The Sonnet is the most ancient form of Italian poetry, and was
practised in that country as early as the thirteenth century.
Petrarch, who died in 1374, made it his model and brought it
to perfection. The Petrarcan form, which was used also by
Tasso and all the other Italian sonneteers, is now called the
' proper ' or ' legitimate,' in contradistinction to the greater
ease and freedom characteristic of the larger number of English
Sonnets. It may be useful to note, in passing, that an easily
accessible example of the proper method of disposing the
fourteen deca-syllabic lines which must be used in a poem of
this class will be found in the sonnet On Westminster Bridge by
Wordsworth. The Songs and Sonnettes of Surrey and Wyatt
were first published, by Tottel, in 1557, in his Miscellany,
which was the first poetical collection printed in the English
language.

The Ballad, which may be defined as ' a simple narrative
poem in short stanzas of two or four lines, in which a story is
told in straightforward verse, often with great elaborateness
and detail in incident, but alwaj^s with graphic simplicity and
force,' was produced in great abundance in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. It is, in short, a sort of minor epic. The
earlier examples were composed by wandering minstrels, and
were orally transmitted. Many of them are lost for ever. For
the best collection of them we are indebted to Bishop Percy,
who published a large number of them in his Reliques of A ncient
English Poetry in 1765. This form of verse, almost without
exception, affects ' the iambic measure of twelve or fourteen
syllables, rhyming in couplets, which, however, naturally divide
themselves by means of the ccesura, or pause, into stanzas of
four lines, the rhymes generally occurring at the end of the
second and fourth verses.'

' Ballad,' says Mr. Andrew Lang, ' is, in ordinary use, a term
for any narrative poem, usually in the simple measure, of which
a notable example is :

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 21

1 " Lord William was buried in St. Mary's kirk,

Lady Margaret in Mary's quire ;
Out o' the lady's grave grew a bonny red rose,
And out o' the knight's a briar."

' Such poems may be written in the most civilized ages by the
most cultivated authors — by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or
Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. But these and similar compo-
sitions are mere mimicries of what is more technically styled
the ballad — the narrative Volks-leid, or popular tale in verse.'

The Scottish ballads are vastly superior to the English ' in
vigour, poetic touch, and the moving of supernatural awe.'
And this is all the more remarkable when we consider the fact
that in the higher forms of poetry England is the superior of
Scotland. All known ballads have been collected by Professor
Child, of Harvard, in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads.

One of the circumstances -which must be reckoned as favour-
able to literature in the sixteenth century was the patronage
and encouragement extended to it by Queen Elizabeth^ who
was herself ' very learned and addicted to poetical compo-
sition.' She also possessed the art of gathering round her the
most intellectual and gifted spirits of the age. ' The study
of the belles-lettres was in some measure identified with the
courtly and arbitrary principles of the time, not, perhaps, so
much from any enlightened spirit in those who supported such
principles as from a desire of opposing the Puritans and other
malcontents, whose religious doctrines taught them to despise
some departments of elegant literature, and utterly to condemn
others.' This spirit of opposition to the Puritans, who con-
demned the drama for its immorality, and not without some
cause, was one of the main reasons why that branch of literature
obtained the support of Elizabeth and her successors. The
fact th it a majority of the poets were either courtiers themselves,
or wei -". dependent in a measure on the patronage of courtiers,
and wr-'c constantly smiled upon and even rewarded by the
Queen .ould not fail to give a tone to the poetry of the day.

A wr er in the Edinburgh Review expresses the opinion that
this era was ' by far the mightiest in the history of English
literatu* ^, or indeed of human intellect and capacity.' Speaking
of the -ixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of
the reisia of Elizabeth to the period cf +r-e Restoration, the same
writer says there never was anything like it. ' In point of real

22 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor
the age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., nor of Louis XIV.,
can come at all into comparison ; for in that short period we
shall find the names of almost all the very great men that this
nation has ever produced.' The names of two of our most
illustrious poets, Spenser and Shakespeare, are amongst those
cited in proof of the truth of this statement. It will not be
contended by the most ardent that the age was without faults
or blemishes. With all its ardour, its eloquence, its high con-
ceits, its poets, no less than its prose-writers, have been accused
of ' the Elizabethan fault of excessive wordiness and fantastic
wit.' But these are easily excused in such an age.

First amongst the poets of his age, in time and in genius,
stands Edmund Spenser, the author of the Faerie Queene. This
great work shares the fate of incompletion with Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, and more than one great epic. Had it been
completed, it would have been a monster poem, for Spenser
intended it to contain no less than twelve books, of which only
six survive. It is perhaps fortunate that the other half was
lost, and it might even have gained in value if it lacked half of
what remains, for it is admitted that the strength of the work
lies almost entirely in the first three books. Each book con-
stitutes a separate poem, sufficiently long. Prince Arthur, who
' flits from song to song,' forms a kind of connecting-link. Each
book was to have been dedicated to the chivalrous adventures
of a certain virtue, the probationary personages uniting at last
in the Fairy Court of Gloriana. Its author was so great that
his immeasurable superiority over his contemporaries is said not
only to have raised him above their envy, but even to have
gained for him their love. Even the ' Satiric Nash ' calls him
the ' heavenly Spenser.' ' Not one worthy competitor can be
found whose name can be ranked with his as an exponent of the
delights of fairyland. As Hazlitt has said, ' If Ariosto transports
us into the regions of romance, all Spenser's poetry is fairyland.'
He cannot be called the founder of a school, for he has never been
successfully imitated, though some have made the attempt, as
we shall see later on. He is a school in himself. Yet critics
have differed as to his merits. Hume is as faint in his praise as
Hazlitt is enthusiastic in his eulogy. The manner of Spenser
was -formed, to a certain extent, upon the Italian model, and

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 23

yet he is as unlike the Italian poets in many respects as he is
unlike all other English poets. He stands alone — the second of
our four grand old masters of poetry.

' In the period between Chaucer and Surrey/ says Mr. Court-
hope in his exhaustive work on English poetry, ' we see the medi-
eval current running with preponderating power, blended only
with a faint national colour derived from Chaucer's dramatic
genius, and with an equally slight tinge of classicism, reflected
from his study of Ovid, Virgil, and Statius. The increasing
strength of the Renaissance is indicated, through the sixteenth
century, by a profusion of superficial classical imagery, which
mixes itself, in naive incongruity, with the allegorical forms
peculiar to the learning of the Middle Ages. The spirit of this
period is illustrated and summed up in the poetry of Spenser.'

The latter half of the sixteenth century is ornamented, too,
with the name of Shakespeare. ' It was the age when Bacon's
vast intellect (and he also may be called a poet in the wealth
and pregnancy of his imagery) was beginning to map out the
geography of all science ; when Jonson was anatomizing the
surface "humours" of society, and reconstructing on a Gothic
stage the principles of the ancient drama ; when Spenser was
weaving faith, morals, history, and intrigue into his endless web
of romance ; when Sidney was impersonating in a nobler shape
the departed spirit of chivalry ; and when language itself was
running riot in novelty in the euphuism of Lyly. The " myriad-
minded " poet is a fit type of this variegated age : his apothegms
would construct a moral philosophy ; his maxims a system of
enlightened policy ; his observations a treatise on natural
history ; his characters a psychological discourse on human
nature.'

The classes of subjects chosen by Shakespeare are the same as
those adopted by other writers of his time — namely, the most
striking portions of ancient and modern history, and the romances
of the Italian novelists. His methods of composition, ' with
some degrading peculiarities of style,' are also those of the age.
Everything else was his own, and his individual power was such
as was possessed by no other writer of any country or any time.
The marvel (and the pity, in the light of modern investigation)
is that our knowledge of his personal history is so limited. His
modestj^ seems to have been as marked as his genius. Though

24 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

his plays were popular, yet his transcendent genius did not begin
to be fully recognised until a full century after his death. It
was in the fulness of time, nevertheless, that Shakespeare came
to supply a want and to satisfy a craving. Professor Dowden
has told us that ' in the closing years of the sixteenth century
the life of England ran high. The revival of learning had
enriched the national mind with a store of new ideas and images ;
the reformation of religion had been accomplished, and its fruits
were now secure ; those conspiracies against the Queen's life
had recently been foiled, and her rival, the Queen of Scots, had
perished on the scaffold ; the huge attempt of Spain against the
independence of England had been defeated by the gallantry
of English seamen, aided by the winds of heaven. English
adventurers were exploring un travelled lands and distant oceans ;
English citizens were growing in wealth and importance ; the
farmers made the soil give up twice its former yield ; the nobility,
however fierce their private feuds and rivalries might be,
gathered around the Queen as their centre. It was felt that
England was a power in the continent of Europe. Men were in
a temper to think human life, with its action and its passions,
a very important and interesting thing. They did not turn away
from this world, and despise it in comparison with a. heavenly
country, as did many of the finest souls in the Middle Ages ;
they did not, like the writers of the age of Queen Anne, care only
for " the town " ; it was man that they cared for, and the whole
of manhood — its good and evil, its greatness and grotesque-
ness, its laughter and its tears. When men cared thus about
human life, their imagination craved living pictures and visions
of it.'

This craving it was that Shakespeare came to satisfy, and he
satisfied it as no writer had ever done before, and as none has
ever done since his day. Amongst the innumerable critics who
have dwelt upon the genius and influence of this, the greatest
writer in the history of English literature, we can only refer to
a few, whose names may be suggestive to the student. Sir
Walter Scott, Campbell, Leigh Hunt, Schlegel (a celebrated
German writer), Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hallam, and Lamb have
written copiously on the subject. It has been said by the
translator of Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Litera-
ture that of these ' Schlegel was the finest critic, Coleridge the

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 25

finest of illustrators, and Hazlitt the finest commentator on
Shakespeare.'

Quaint, but powerful and suggestive, are the words in which
Thomas Carlyle expresses, in that rugged English of his, the
debt which the world of letters owes to this great master. We
will quote some passages from his article on The Hero as a. Poet,
a work which, with the one fault of brevity, stands by itself in
the domain of literary criticism : ' As Dante, the Italian man,
was sent into our world to embody musically the religion of the
Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner
Life, so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer
Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies,
humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting,
looking at the world men then had. As in Homer we may
still construe Old Greece, so in Shakespeare and Dante, after
thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in Faith and
in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith
or soul ; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the
Practice or body. This latter also we were to have ; a man was
sent for it, the man Shakespeare. . . . Italy produced the one
world- voice ; we English had the honour of producing the other..
Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man
came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-
sufficing is this Shakespeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not
prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard
of him as a Poet. The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man
in Stratford there, had been enough for this man ! But, indeed,
that strange out-budding of our whole English existence, which
we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own
accord ?'

And once again : ' In some sense it may be said that this
glorious Elizabethan Era with its Shakespeare, as the outcome and
flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to
the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which
was the theme of Dante's song, had produced the Practical Life
which Shakespeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now
and always is, was the soul of Practice ; the primary vital fact
in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-
Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could
abolish it, before] Shakespeare, the noblest product of it, made

26 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless.
Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else might be
necessary, sent him forth ; taking small thought of Acts of Par-
liament. . . . This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and
blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours.
Priceless Shakespeare was the free gift of Nature ; given alto-
gether silently — received altogether silently, as if it had been a
thing of little account. And yet. very literally, it is a priceless
thing.' In these and such-like noble words does one of the
other great ones of the Earth pour forth his soul, without an
apparent suspicion of the doubts concerning his Hero which
we have reverted to elsewhere in this volume.

' Of what is commonly called our Elizabethan literature,' says
Dr. Craik, ' the greater portion appertains to the reign, not of
Elizabeth, but of James — to the seventeenth, not to the six-
teenth century. The common name, nevertheless, is the fair
and proper one. It sprung up in the age of Elizabeth, and was
mainly the product of influences which belonged to that age,
though their effect extended into another. It was born of and
ripened by that sunny morning of a new day — " great Eliza's
golden time " — when a general sense of security had given men
ease of mind and disposed them to freedom of thought, while
the economical advancement of the country put life and spirit
into everything, and its growing power and renown filled and
elevated the national heart.' The same writer sagaciously
points out, moreover, that the Elizabethan literature had a
double parentage : ' If that brilliant day was its mother, the
previous night of storm was its father.'

The accession of James the First of England and Sixth of Scot-
land did not in any way tend to lessen the effect of the great
impulse which literature had received. He was himself a volu-
minous writer on subjects varying ' from predestination to
tobacco,' and had issued a work entitled Essays of a Prentice
in the Divine Art of Poesie, with the Rewlis and Cantelis to be
pursued, and avoided. Moreover, some of the great writers of
the age of Elizabeth were still wielding the pen with unabated
vigour. The Queen, Anne of Denmark, was an admirer of the
form of entertainment known as the masque, and did all in her
power to encourage its development as an art. Ben Jonson,
who was the author of no less than thirty-five of these ' courtly

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 27

compliments,' brought the art to its highest point of perfection.
Of these masques the finest were the Masque of Oberon, the
Masque of Queens, and Paris Anniversary.

Though such works were marred by fulsome compliments, yet
their beauty of diction was sufficient to atone in some measure
for the decline of the dramatic art which is accounted to have
come to an end with Shirley, who wrote about forty dramatic
pieces and died in 1666. In a preface which he wrote for the
first collection of part of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher in
1647 he says : ' Now, reader, in this tragical age, where the
theatre hath been so much outacted, congratulate thy own
happiness that, in this silence of the stage, thou hast a liberty
to read these inimitable plays — to dwell and converse in these
immortal groves — which were only showed our fathers in a
conjuring glass, as suddenly removed as represented.' The Long
Parliament suppressed the drama by an ordinance of the Lords
and Commons passed on September 2, 1642. It set forth that
' public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public
stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation, this being an exercise
of sad and pious solemnity, and the other being spectacles of
pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious mirth and levity.
. . . While these sad causes and set times of humiliation do
continue, public stage-plays shall cease and be forborne.'

The literature of the Cavaliers was not remarkable for any
high order of merit. Their poetry in the main was lyrical, and
Carew, Denham, Herrick, Waller, Suckling, and Lovelace were
its chief exponents. It is expressively described by Collier as
' the sparkling, spontaneous efforts of a genius that poured forth
its sweet and living waters in spite of overwhelming floods of
wine and dense fumes of tobacco-smoke.' While some of their
verses are gay, graceful, and polished, there are some, again,
which are stained with the marks of vice and licentiousness.
Butler was their greatest poet.

The writings of the Puritans were of a different order. They
were the outcome of a deep religious thoughtfulness which was
fed and fostered by the habit of life which they adopted for them-
selves. The triumph of the Roundheads came with the end of
the Civil War and the execution of Charles. But the proudest
period of Puritan literature was yet to come. Milton had
already given proof of his transcendent genius in L' Allegro, II

28 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Penseroso, and Comus. But the star of his genius did not reach
its zenith until, after long years of political trouble and sore
bodily affliction, he produced the greatest epic in the English
language, and laid the old story of Paradise Lost again before
the world.

The so-called Metaphysical poets belong exclusively to the
seventeenth century. The title was conferred upon them by
Dr. Johnson.1 The earliest of these is Dr. John Donne, Dean of
St. Paul's, an accomplished writer of voluminous verse. These
poets are described as ' writers in whom the intellectual faculty
obtains an enormous and disproportionate supremacy over
sentiment and feeling,' as being ever on the look-out for in-
genious and unexpected analogies, usually false, and based upon
some equivocation of language. 'An idea,' says Mr. Shaw, ' is
racked into every conceivable distortion ; the most remote com-
parisons, the obscurest recesses of historical and scientific allu-
sion, are ransacked to furnish comparisons which no reader can
suggest to himself, and which, when presented to him by the
perverse ingenuity of the poet, fill him with a strange mixture of
astonishment and shame, like the distortions of the posture-
master or the tricks of sleight-of-hand.' In' these graphic words
we have an expressive description of the corrupt taste which is
evinced in the writings of the poets of the first half of the seven-
teenth century. Almost every poet of the time was infected by
it. The germ of the disease has been traced to Spain and Italy,
but its naturalization may be placed as early as Lyly, ' the
English Gongora,' who was born about the year 1554, and whose
works are tinctured with affectation and absurdity, ' with an
ingenious jargon ' which became the fashion of his day.

But in spite of all that has been written in terms which savour
of adverse criticism concerning the metaphysical school, it is
generally allowed that they played no small part in the education
of the correct and artificial school of poets which came into being
in the reigns of William, Anne, and George I. The metaphysical
poets came to an end with Abraham Cowley, who must be
accounted the greatest of them all. So deeply was he imbued
with the ' metaphysical ' spirit that he even borrowed occasion-
ally the very words and images of Donne. Though his learning
was vast, his style of writing is strangely unequal. Rising at
1 Dr. Craik says it was conferred by Dryden.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 29

times to heights of nervous grandeur, he sinks again into depths
of weakness and simplicity. But King Charles II. said truly
that ' Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better man in
England/ when he had been laid to rest between Chaucer and
Spenser in the Poets' Corner at Westminster.

The reign of Charles I. was especially prolific in poetry, and
that, too, of a very superior kind. Indeed, it has been truly said
that the quantity of beautiful verse which it has bequeathed to
us is wonderful. The themes and the tones of the poetical
exercises which mark this period are immensely varied. ' The
forms in which fancy disported itself embrace almost all that are
possible, except some of the most arduous ; the tone of sentiment
shifted from the gravest to the gayest, from rapturous devotion
to playful levity, from tragic tearfulness to fantastic wit, from
moral solemnity to indecent licence ; the themes ranged from
historical fact to invented fable, from the romantic story to the
scene of domestic life, from momentous truths to puerile trifles.'
Amongst the dramatists of the time the most notable names
are those of Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. After Shakespeare,
Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, the greatest English
dramatist is Philip Massinger, whose first published play, The
Virgin Martyr, appeared in 1620. Only nineteen of the thirty-
eight plays which he is said to have written have been handed
down to us.

Mr. Stopford Brooke divides the poetry of this period into five
distinct classes — Lyric, Satirical, Rural, Spenserian, and Re-
ligious. The lyric poems are short songs and epigrams on the
passing interests of the day, on the charms of court beauties, or
' the fleeting forms of fleeting love.' Satirical poetry became
more and more bitter in tone as the Royalists and the Puritans
drifted wider apart. The increase of appreciation of country
life and scenery is seen in such rural poems as Denham's Cooper's
Hill, which introduces the class of poetry which makes natural
landscape the ground of philosophic meditation. The Spen-
serians are those who imitate Spenser, as Phineas and Giles
Fletcher, Henry More, and John Chalkhill. Of the religious
poets the greatest are George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and
Richard Crashaw. William Habington, a Roman Catholic poet
of considerable power, ' mingled his devotion to his religion with
the praises of his wife under the name of Castara.'

30 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The ' correct ' school of poetry belongs to the closing years of
the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth.
The style of the poets of the middle period of Elizabeth's
reign, though natural, was generally unrestrained by definite
rules. The style of such poets as Shakespeare and Spenser was
not only natural, but artistic. This dual quality, however, did
not extend to the minor poets, who, inspired only by their feelings,
wrote without much care for the form in which those feelings
were expressed. A new departure is traceable in the work of
the poets who flourished between the latter part of Elizabeth's
reign and the period of the Civil War. The national life had
grown chill, and the want of art had begun to make itself felt.
' The far-fetched images, the hazarded meanings, the over-
fanciful way of putting thoughts, the sensational expression of
feeling in which the Elizabethan poets indulged, not only ap-
peared in all their ugliness when they were inspired by no wrarm
feeling, but were indulged in far more than before.' To such an
extent was this method eventually carried that their poetry has
been accused of having no clear meaning, and thus the natural
style, unregulated by art, had become unnatural.

It was at this juncture that the need for definite rules began
to be most keenly felt, and there were two influences which partly
caused and partly supported this desire. The growing influence
of Milton's works was one. The other was, to quote the words
of Mr. Stopford Brooke, ' that of the movement all over Europe
towards inquiry into the right way of doing things, and into the
truth of things. ... In poetry it produced a school of criticism""
which first took form in France, and the influence of Boileau,
La Fontaine, and others who were striving after greater finish
and neatness of expression told on England now.' It is com-
monly assumed that our modern English poetry first showed a
disposition to imitate the French models after the Restoration,
but the truth is that it had begun to do so at an earlier date.
Malherbe, Racan, and Malleville are to be accounted the true
fathers of Waller, Carew, Lovelace,. and Suckling. 'The colder
and more correct spirit of art ' is seen to develop in the writings
of Waller, Denham, and Cowley. ' Vigorous form was given to
that spirit by Dryden, and perfection of artifice added to it by
Pope. The artificial style succeeded and extinguished the
natural.'

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 31

A new school of poets, called Augustan, from the so-called
Augustan reign of Queen Anne, now arose. Of this Dryden
must be accounted the first exponent, and Pope an immediate
^follower. The passions were set aside for those things in which
intellect, conscience, and the social and political instincts pla>
the largest part, and in which the animal nature gives way to
refinement and taste. Philosophy and satire are also accorded
a prominent place in the poetry of this new school. The chief
writer of verse on the popular side after the Restoration was
Andrew Marvel, first of patriots and wits, whose satires embody
the Puritans' wrath' with the vices of the Court and King, and
his shame for the disgrace of England amongst the nations.
Dryden, too, was satirical, his Absalom and Achitophel being the
foremost of English satires, and the first good example of that
party poetry which Pope indulged in with still more of the
spirit of gall and bitterness. The satires of Swift were coarse
in language, but never failed of the mark at which they were
aimed.

Yet another new school of poetry came into being in the
declining years of Pope. Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, and
Thomson's Seasons, the former appearing in 1725 and the latter
in' 1730, were its pioneers. Thomson is the poet who connects
the age of Pope with that of Crabbe. So great was the change
which manifested itself in the popular taste and sentiment in
the beginning of the eighteenth century that it is most fitly
described as a revolution. ' The cold and clear-cut artificial
spirit of that classicism which is exhibited in its highest form
in the writings of Pope ' gave way gradually but surely to what
is known as the romantic type in poetry. This new school
embraced many poets of varying moods and unequal merits.
Under the general heading of ' The Dawn of Romantic Poetry '
Mr. Shaw has grouped the most notable exponents of the new
methods. Besides those we have already mentioned we find
the names of James Beattie, author of The Minstrel ; Robert
Blair, author of The Grave ; William Collins, the lyrical poet
whose career was all too brief ; Mark Akenside, whose philo-
sophy found a vent in The Pleasures of the Imagination ; Thomas
Gray, who gave the world the inimitable Elegy in a Country
Churchyard; William Cowper, pre-eminently the poet of the
domestic affections and religious feelings ; Thomas Chatterton,

32 1

the precocious genius whose brief story is so full of woe ;
George Crabbe, the poet of the passions in humble life ; and,
lastly, Robert Burns, the greatest poet that Scotland has
produced.

Burns was not much more than sixteen years old when he
wrote some of his best and most striking poems. Surrounded
by circumstances the reverse of encouraging, he composed his
tender and pensive songs, his scathing satires, and his unrivalled
lyrics. Truly this poet was ' born, not made.' In writing
about this ruling passion of his life, he says : ' Poetry was a
darling walk for my mind ; but it was only indulged in according
to the humour of the hour. I had usually a dozen or more
pieces on hand ; I took up one or other as it suited the momentary
tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on
fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many
devils, till they got vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over
my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet.' A collection of
the poetical tributes written in memory of Robert Burns would
form a pleasing volume. The best are those by Wordsworth,
Montgomery, and Campbell. The following lines are by the
last-mentioned :

Farewell, high chief of Scottish song !
That couldst alternately impart
Wisdom and rapture in thy page,
And brand each vice with satire strong ;
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.

Nor skilled one flame alone to fan :
His country's high-souled peasantry
What patriot-pride he taught !— how much
To weigh the inborn worth of man !
And rustic life and poverty
Grow beautiful beneath his touch.

The religious principles of Burns have been censured by some
critics with great severity. ' Burns was deeply impressed,'
says a writer in the Saturday Magazine, ' with the sentiment
of religion — a sentiment in which we can hardly conceive how,
by any possibility, a real poet can be deficient ; yet his devo-
tional feelings do not appear to have sprung from sound religious
principles, nor to have been sustained by regular, constant,
and systematic acts of worship. But it is almost a vain task

to look for anything of the nature of dogmatic theology in
the works of our English poets. It occurred to the Rev. Stopford
Brooke to give a course of lectures in St. James's Chapel Royal,
in the year 1872, on this interesting subject, which have resulted,
happily for the historical student, in a valuable volume. In
it he speaks of the growth of the Poetry of Man and of Nature.
But even what he calls the devotional element has evidently
been found after most careful research. The devotional element
which is traceable in the writings of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan,
and some of the Puritan poets, died away in the critical school
which began with Dryden and ended with Pope. It is with
Pope that Mr. Brooke really begins, dealing in one chapter
with the theology he finds between the ages of Pope and Cowper.
But he tells us that ' the poets of England ever since Cowper
have been more and more theological, till we reach such men
as Tennyson or Browning, whose poetry is overcrowded with
theology. But the theology of the poets is different from that
of Churches and Sects, in this especially, that it is not formulated
into propositions, but is the natural growth of their own hearts.
They are, by their very nature, strongly individual ; they
grow more by their own special genius than by the influence of
the life of the world around them, and they are, therefore,
sure to have a theology — that is, a Doctrine of God in His rela-
tion to man, nature, and their own soul — which will be inde-
pendent of conventional religious thought. They will be,
as poets, free from those claims of dogma which influence
ordinary men from their youth up, and from the religious ten-
dencies of surrounding opinion. Their theology will therefore
want the logical order which prevails in confessions and articles,
and as each will give expression to it in vivid accordance with
his natural character, it will be a different thing in each.' This,
it is clear, is true only of their poetry, for in their everyday
intercourse with men they each would be, doubtless, the pro-
fessor of a creed.

Mr. Brooke becomes most eloquent when dealing with the
influence which the French Revolution worked upon Words-
worth and upon the world — that great upheaval which ' gave
sudden, clear, and terrible force to the long-prepared ideas of
Europe.' It did not come upon the great religious poet unpre-
pared, for he was himself a natural republican. In the school

3

34 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

of nature he had learned the lesson of obedience to God's power.
It could not be, he tells us,

But that one tutored thus should look with awe
Upon the faculties of man, receive
Gladly the highest promises, and hail
As best the government of equal rights
And individual worth.

The influence of the Revolution was far-reaching. As De
Tocqueville says : ' The Revolution had no peculiar territory.
It was not made for France alone, but for the world, and its
result was to blot out in some sort from the map all the ancient
frontiers. In spite of laws, traditions, character, and language,
it brought men together on a common ground, changed enemies
into compatriots, and formed above national compatriots an
intellectual country common to all, of which men of all nations
could become citizens. . . . Its end was the general rights and
duties of all men in political and social matters.' Thus it taught,
in the highest and best sense, that theory which is so liable to
abuse and misapplication — the common Fatherhood of God
and the equal Brotherhood of Men. This new doctrine Words-
worth imbibed in all its fulness and force of appeal. He did
so almost unconsciously. He could not help himself. In this
awakening of liberty he saw only the hand of the Almighty, and
the feeling rather than the conviction influenced his verse. For

him

From hour to hour the antiquated earth
Beat like the heart of man.

He saw love in all around him. There was given, as De Quincey
says, to the whole system of his own thoughts and feelings a
firmer tone, and a sense of the awful realities which surround
the mind. Thus, though he continued to be a revealer of Nature,
he became also the Poet of Man, with an elevating and softening
influence upon his age.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a new
school of poets. The Lake School, as it was called, included
three contemporaneous writers of very nearly equal powers,
who also lived in close proximity to one another. Of these
the greatest was William Wordsworth, who founded the school.
Southey and Coleridge were his associates. The best critics
are almost unanimous in pronouncing the title as a misnomer,
which was applied to them at first in a spirit of ridicule by

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 35

some of the reviews. Yet the term has become historical and
permanent, chiefly, perhaps, on account of its picturesqueness.
Wordsworth loved the scenery of the lakes of Cumberland and
Westmoreland when a boy. The best years of his manhood
were passed amidst its soul-inspiring vales and mountains.
At Rydal Mount, overlooking the waters of Rydal Lake, he spent
his closing years, apart from the busier haunts of men.

It is not to be wondered at that a man who made poetry so
completely his business in life, as well as his recreation, should
be the founder of a new style. He was a firm believer in the
extensive field which Nature herself affords for poetic purposes,
and proceeded with firmness and a singular lack of affectation
to make the most of it. The -chief aim, at least in his earlier
poems, was to choose situations and occurrences from every-
day life, and to tell of them in language which, though poetical
in a true sense, was nevertheless such as is in common use
amongst men. They were coloured, but not highly coloured,
and were always recognisable under his treatment as types
of real men or descriptions of real places. In later years the
poet rose to greater heights, and the ridicule which was poured
out upon him and his school died away. The Excursion is one
of the grandest philosophical poems in the English language,
and nothing could be more touching than We are Seven, a
typical example of another phase of his genius. The persever-
ance and stoic indifference to the sneers of reviewers, which
characterized the three Lake Poets, were rewarded before their
deaths with the full appreciation of a grateful public, and the
day is far distant when the refining influence of their manner
shall cease to be felt.

Dr. Dowden, Professor of English Literature in the University
of Dublin, in an exhaustive and able lecture on the Literary
Movement from Gray to Wordsworth, is reported as having
used these eloquent words :

' In Coleridge a great romancist was conjoined with a great
idealist. In Wordsworth a great naturalist was conjoined
with a great idealist. Neither is sentimental in the lowest
sense of the word, though perhaps some of Coleridge's poems,
for example the poem on Love, approach dangerously near to
the sentimental. But both Coleridge and Wordsworth have
that expansion of the heart and reverence for human passion

3—2

36 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

which came with the emotional outbreak. Both Coleridge and
Wordsworth, however, to be understood, must be approached
by the line of the revolutionary thought and feeling of the
eighteenth century. It was only in retrospect, looking back
from maturer years upon the season of his ardent youth, that
Wordsworth as a poet tells us of the boundless joy and hope
breathed into him by the newly awakened spirit in France.
From first to last what was best in the revolutionary spirit
of the eighteenth century lived in Wordsworth. When we
understand this we will understand his work as a poet. There
was now a growing tendency towards more transcendental
conceptions in metaphysics, ethics, and theology, which trans-
cendental conceptions told in two ways upon literature : first,
in animating and ennobling the feeling of external nature ;
and, secondly, in ennobling the idea of man, as possessing
within himself, in heart and conscience, the authentic oracle
of God. The dry orthodoxy of the earlier part of the century
was found unsatisfactory in a period of quickened emotions
and quickened imagination. The conception of God as the
Author of Nature and the moral Governor of the universe,
presiding over it from afar, and operating through the agency of
second causes, gave place to the conception of God as immanent in
Nature and present to the heart and to the moral being of man.'

It may fairly be asserted that no poet ever exercised a more
direct and elevating influence on his contemporaries than did
Sir Walter Scott. No Scotchman of his time, as Carlyle says,
was more entirely Scotch than he ; ' the good and the not so
good, which all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of
him.' It was in his writings, prose and poetry alike, that
the highest and best sentiments of his countrymen found their
most forcible expression. When Scott spoke, it was Scotland
that spoke in him, and through him. His genius as a poet
was not so great, perhaps not even so appealing, as that of
Burns, but if we are forced into a comparison we cannot forget
that Scott the poet is dwarfed by Scott the novelist, and that
these two are the same man.

Does a modern critic go too far in saying that there has been
nothing to compare with him in the past ? If not, he can
hardly be accused of exaggeration when he follows up his state-
ment by declaring that it is altogether improbable that there

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 37

will be such another exponent of his country's feelings in the
future. The grand memorial which gives a majestic finish to
one of the most noble thoroughfares in the world is not too
imposing a tribute to the memory of one who brought the High-
land and the Lowland peoples into sympathetic union and
patriotic brotherhood. Marvellous and far-reaching was the
magnetic influence of the Wizard of the North, who within
his lifetime saw justice done to the Celtic race, and not only
saw, but knew that he had caused, an almost universal revival
of interest in the romantic history of his native land. The
popularity of Campbell was at its height, Wordsworth, Southey,
and Coleridge were contending with only a measure of success
against the adverse taste of the time, when Scott took up his
pen and soon made the world re-echo with his song.

He revived the English metrical romance, and increased the
store of ballad poetry of which his native land had not before
been destitute, but in respect of which it needed enriching.
He delighted all his readers with a series of metrical tales in
which are to be found a revival of the manners and customs,
the events and incidents, of the days of chivalry. His poems
were received with an amount of popular favour for which
there is no parallel in the annals of English literature. The
Lay of the Last Minstrel was published in 1805, and within six
3'ears from that date twenty-five thousand copies of this
exquisite poem had been sold. But he was not without a rival
in the swift race for fame. His popularity had begun to ex-
perience a slight decline when the star of Lord Byron rose
high above the horizon. In 1812 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
appeared, and its author was elevated at once by general consent
to the first place amongst English poets. The Spenserian
stanza became once more the popular mode of poetic expression.
The benevolent misanthrope, slave to degrading vices though
he was known to be, became the hero of the hour. ' The per-
sonal character of Byron,' says Mr. Chambers, 'was an extra-
ordinary mixture of benevolence and misanthropy, and of
aspiration after excellence, with a practical enslavement to
degrading vices. The only key to the mystery is to be found
in that theory which represents the temperament of genius
in its extreme forms, as a species of insanity.'

At the same time the voice of Erin was heard in the sweet

38 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

music of Thomas Moore. The Odes of Anacreon had appeared
in 1800, when the new poet was only twenty years of age. But
it was not until 1813 that he gave to the world that collection
of Irish Melodies which is one of the most delightful repertories
of united verse and music which the genius of poesy has produced
in any age or any country. In 1817 he established his claim
to a place in the first rank of modern poets by the publication
of Lalla Rookh, ' an Oriental tale, or rather a series of tales,
conceived in the voluptuous spirit of Asiatic poetry, and replete
with the richest Asiatic imagery.' This poem is said to have
brought him in the sum of three thousand pounds. He has
been apth' called ' a conjurer with words, which he makes to
serve rather as wings for his thoughts than as the gross attire
or embodiment with which they must be encumbered to render
them palpable or visible.' Nothing could surpass his elegance
or his wit, the natural facility with which he chooses the most
apt and graceful form in which to convey his meaning. No
words in the whole range of Irish literature are more fully

attuned to

The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed.

Generally speaking, the poetical literature of the first half
of the nineteenth century was of a high order of merit. It has
been truly said that ' any comparison of the Elizabethan poetry,
save Spenser's alone, with that of the nineteenth century would
show an extravagant predilection for the mere name of antiquity.'
Mr. Spalding, writing in 1860, says : ' We are, surely, quite
safe in believing that the lovers of our poetical literature,
when they have ranged over all its treasures, will find their
richest stores of delight, after Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Milton, in the dramatic group which is headed by Fletcher and
Jonson, and in the modern one in which are found, and not
unaccompanied, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Scott and Byron.
Exact comparison of the two groups is impossible ; and, if it
could be instituted, it would be uninstructive. But, while
most of the moderns we are considering stand morally much
higher than our dramatic ancients, it is no more than an act
of justice to our own times to bear in mind this fact, that both
of the illustrious bands excel more in originality of genius than
in skill or perfection of execution.' The characteristic just

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 39

referred to is to be noted as a feature which marks the greater
part of the poetry of this period. Lack of polish in the language
used, and want of symmetry in the treatment of the subject,
have been condemned more than once as the conspicuous faults
of .the poets in question. It has been suggested that the cause
may be traced in ' the reaction which took place against the
cold elaboration of the preceding century,' and ' the spirited
vehemence of excitement,' from which the writers inhaled so
much of their power.

The student cannot fail to observe that the dawn of each of
the last three centuries of our history was marked by a period
of keen literary excitement, and not only so, but that in
each case the particular excitement of the time is to be traced
to a foreign influence. In the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the age of Elizabeth and James I., the influence came
from the Italian school ; in the beginning of the eighteenth,
the Augustan age of Queen Anne, the literature of France
asserted itself ; and the nineteenth owes as much to the
inspiration caught from the literature of Germany. The
German tone is echoed most clearly, perhaps, in the works of
Wordsworth and his so-called school. The cluster of poets
who commanded the attention of the world while the nine-
teenth century was yet young was in number, as in greatness,
a notable one. To the names already mentioned must be
added those of Campbell, Keats, and Shelley. Nor can we
omit from the roll of honour such sweet singers as Reginald
Heber and Felicia Hemans. Surely a memorable and illustrious
group, which marks the time in which they wrote as a great
literary epoch. One of them, at least, was recognised as a classic
before his decease. Amongst his English contemporaries
Wordsworth stands alone as the poet of everyday life.

The peculiar manner which is supposed to be distinctive of
what has been persistently called the Lake School is first found
in the Lyrical Ballads, which were published in 1798 and 1800.
As a specimen of this style Dr. Craik quotes from The Fountain
and The Affliction of Margaret. The later style of the poet
is of a more sublime description, as Laodamia, and the Poems
of the Imagination. But the nature of all his work, even in his
highest flights of imagination or of genius, is such that he who
runs may read. As a writer of sonnets he has few equals. With

40 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

regard to his power in this form of verse, we may quote the words
which he applies to Milton :

In his hand

The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew

Soul-animating strains.

The sonnet, which had been practically abandoned in the
eighteenth century, has had since the time of Wordsworth a
kind of renaissance.

The nineteenth century was not productive of great things
in the domain of dramatic literature, yet the names of Sheridan
Knowles, Henry Taylor, and Thomas Noon Talfourd remind
us that the art had not altogether died out. Knowles modelled
his style upon the manner of the Elizabethan dramatists, copying
Massinger more closely than any other. His work is not of the
intense school, but is nevertheless effective and artistic.

On the death of Wordsworth, the laurel was given to Alfred
Tennyson. Never was laurel more worthily worn than by
him who was ' caressed by critics, admired by all, imitated by
not a few.' The genius of Tennyson was so highly appreciated,
so fully grasped, and so universally acknowledged, during his
lifetime that historians have been careful not to predict a
permanence for his fame. Whatever may be conjectured by
individual critics as to his chances of immortality, there can
hardly be any reason to fear that the favour in which his work
is held can be short-lived. It is freely admitted that he was
more to his own age than any other poet has ever been to his,
and he must ever be accorded an honourable, if not a foremost,
place as an exponent, not merely of the genius, but of the purity
of song.

Of the characteristics of more modern poetry we forbear
to speak, for reasons which will be sufficiently obvious. To
express our feeling with regard to the present age we cannot
do better than quote the forcible words which were applied by
Shelley to his own :

' The literature of England has arisen, as it were, from a new
birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would under-
value contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in
intellectual achievements, and we live among such philosophers
and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared
since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY 41

The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the
awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion
or institution is poetry. . . . The persons in whom this power
resides may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature,
have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good
of which they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and
abjure, they are yet compelled to serve the power which is seated
on the throne of their own soul. . . . Poets are the hierophants
of an unapprehended inspiration ; the mirrors of the gigantic
shadows which futurity casts upon the present ; the words
which express what they understand not ; the trumpets which
sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire ; the influence
which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the acknowledged
legislators of the world.'

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER

TALIESIN, AND THE MERDDINS

Flourished from 520-580

TALIESIN, one of the most celebrated of the ancient British poets,
and therefore styled Pen Beirdd, or Chief of the Bards, was the
son of St. Henwg, of Caerleon-upon-Usk. He was partly edu-
cated at the college of Cuttwg, in Glamorgan. He was invited
to the Court of Urien Rheged, where he resided for some time,
and many of his poems are addressed to that chieftain. It is
said of him that, being once fishing with Elffin, the son of Urien,
at sea in a skin coracle, an Irish pirate ship seized him, and bore
him away towards Ireland, but while his captors were at the
height of their drunken mirth, Taliesin pushed his coracle into
the sea, and got into it, with a shield in his hand, which he found
in the ship, and with it he rowed the coracle until he approached
the land. But, losing his shield, he was tossed about at the
mercy of the waves, until he was rescued by Elfnn, the son of
Gwyddno, who introduced him to his father, and obtained for
him a favourable reception and a grant of lands. He is ranked
in the Triads with Merddin Emrys and Merddin ab Madog
Morvryn, as the three baptismal bards of the Isle of Britain.
Many of his works are still extant.

Merddin Emrys flourished about the middle of the fifth
century. The Welsh Bruts, and Nennius, contain a detailed
account of the fabulous birth and prophecies of Merddin in
connection with Vortigern. Merddin, the son of Madog Morvryn,
flourished from about 530 to 580. There are six of his poems
extant. For further details concerning him the student is
referred to Davies' Mythology of the Druids.

The name Merddin is sometimes written Merlin.

42

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 43

THE LAY OF BEOWULF

Written before 600

THE Lay, or Tale, or Poem, of Beowulf is so called, not from the
name of its author, but from the name of its hero, who seems to
have been an historical character living in the sixth century.
He was a ' Geat, and nephew of Hygelac, who is the Chochilaicus
whom Gregory of Tours mentions as raiding the Frisian shore,
and slain by its defenders.' Hygelac died in 520. His son was
placed on the throne by Beowulf, who, after his death, reigned
for fifty years. ' This brings the historic Beowulf up to about
570. But this historic personage has not much to do with the
poem.'

The manuscript, which is amongst the Cotton MSS. of the
British Museum, was written about A.D. 1000, but the poem
is certainly of more ancient origin. It is indeed acknow-
ledged to be the oldest epic in Europe, and was written on the
Continent before 600 A.D. A recent writer, however, in the
latest edition of Mr. Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Litera-
ture, has questioned its right to the name of epic. ' It has been
said to be an epic,' he says, ' but it is more justly a narrative
poem. It has neither the unity, the weight, the continuity,
nor the mighty fates of an epic. Nevertheless, it reaches a
spiritual unity from the consistency of the hero's character
developed from daring youth to wise and self-sacrificing age. It
reaches even excellence in the clearness with which its portraits
are drawn and its natural scenery represented. Our power of
natural description in poetry begins with Beowulf.' If length
alone entitled a poem to be called by the name of epic, then the
claim of Beowulf would be established beyond question, for it
contains 6,356 short alliterative lines, of four accents each.
Many full accounts and translations of this singular poem have
been published. It is a Norse saga, the plot of which may be
thus briefly described :

The hero, who is a Danish prince, and a lineal descendant
of Woden, goes forth on two adventures. In the first he
slays a fiendish cannibal called Grendel, and, encountering
numerous perils by land and by water, overcomes them
by the aid of enchanted weapons wielded by superhuman
strength. In the second his own life is sacrificed in the attempt

44 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

to destroy a ferocious dragon or earthdrake. Metaphors are
freely used throughout the poem, but it contains no more than
five similes. A lack of similes, however, is a usual character-
istic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The poem sets forth, in a very
romantic and picturesque way, many of the Gothic manners and
superstitions. The following lines will convey an idea of the
language in which it is written :

Tha com of more. Then came from the moor,

Under mist-hleodhum, Under mist-hills,

Grendel gougan ; Grendel to go ;

Goddes yrre bar. God's ire he bare.

THE EMBARKING OF BEOWULF* (modernized).

Then the well-geared heroes

Stepped upon the stem, while the stream of ocean
Whirled the sea against the sand. There into the ship's breast
Bright and carved things of cost, carried then the heroes,
And their armour well-arrayed. And the men out pushed
Their tight ocean-wood on adventure long desired.
Swiftly went above the waves, with a wind well fitted
Likest to a fowl, their Floater, with the foam around its throat

*****
Till at last the Seaman saw the land ahead,
Shining sea-cliffs, soaring headlands,
Broad sea-nesses. So this Sailer of the sea
Reached the sea-way's end.

C^DMON, MONK OF WHITBY
Died in 680 A.D., or thereabouts

THE first English poet whose name is known with certainty was
a monk of Whitby, named Csedmon. It has been thought by
many historians that there were two poets of this name, the
elder being the author of some verses on The Beginning of Created
Things, and the younger the one of whom we are now about to
speak. The former has therefore been distinguished from the
latter by means of the epithet ' spurious/ as expressing the
atmosphere of uncertainty which surrounds his name. It is
with the younger or ' genuine ' Caedmon that we now profess
to deal.

Caedmon was a native of Northumbria, who lived and died in
the latter half of the seventh century. He was the author of
a remarkable Paraphrase of the Scriptures which takes rank

* The name of the author of Beowulf is not known.

45

chronologically as the first English poem written on English soil.
We are indebted to the Venerable Bede for the truly romantic
story of Caedmon's first essay in poetical literature. Employed
as a servant at the monastery of Whitby, he passed his days
without any instructor, nourishing within his breast the innate
love of sacred song, but unable to give adequate expression to
the emotions which possessed him, or the images which his brain
conjured up as the hours flew by. He could not even find a
voice to chant the hymns and ballads he had learned. One
evening, amid a company of rustics, he was mortified to find
himself the only silent one, and having retired to the seclusion
of a stable, he fell asleep. In his fitful sleep a stranger came
to him and said, ' Caedmon, sing me something.' ' Alas ! I
cannot. It was for this cause I left the feast/ answered the
youth. ' You must sing to me. Sing of The Beginning of Created
Things,' insisted the stranger. Verse after verse flowed from the
dreamer's lips. More strangely, he recalled them when he awoke,
and went and recited them to the Abbess Hilda, and some of
the scholars of the place. The}' tested his genuineness by giving
him passages of the Bible to present in verse. Within a few
hours, we are told, he composed a poem of wondrous sweetness.
This strange and phenomenal outburst of song was looked upon
as a miracle, and Caedmon, after some preliminary instruction,
was enrolled amongst the monks. The rest of his life was spent
in the composition of religious poems. Besides this dream-song,
he left behind him other works which, though unfinished, are
still extant. In bulk they are almost equal to half of Milton's
Paradise Lost, being chiefly loose paraphrases of Scriptural
passages. They may be roughly divided into two parts, based
respectively on the Old and New Testaments. So striking is
the similarity sometimes between his work and that of Milton
that the latter has been accused, though doubtless unjustly, of
plagiarism. ' Others after him,' says Bede, ' tried to make re-
ligious poems, but none could compare with him.'

The following lines will give an idea of the style and diction
of Caedmon. They are from a description of the overthrow of
Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.

Folc was afsered : Flod-egsa becwom :
Gastas geomre : Geafon deathe-hweop :
Woldon here bleathe : Hamas finden :
A'c behindan beleac : Wyrd mid wsege :

46 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Streamas stodon : Storm up-gewat :
Weollon wael-benna : Wite-rod gefeol :
Heah of heofonum : Hand-weore Codes —

which means, being translated :

(The) folk was afraid : flood-fear came in :

Ghosts murmuring gave (the) death-whoop :

Would (the) host blithely homes find :

And behind locked (them) : Fate with (the) wave.

Streams stood : Storm up-went :

Rolled corpses (of) men : (the) punishment-rod fell

High from heavens, hand-work of God.

Caedmon was the first Anglo-Saxon writer of note. Of his
Paraphrase there is extant but a single MS. of the tenth century
in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, consisting of 229 folio pages,
212 of which contain the account of the Creation and the falls
of the angels and of man, and the story of Genesis down to the
offering of Isaac, the Exodus of Israel, and part of the Book of
Daniel. The remaining pages contain a poem of Christ and
Satan. It is tolerably certain that this poetry, in its present
form at least, is due to various authors, and was written at
different times. Some critics have disputed the identification
of the extant Paraphrase with the work of Bede's poet.

The fine Northumbrian poem known as The Dream of the Holy
Rood has been ascribed to Csedmon.

Caedmon was one of those gifted men who have stamped the
impress of their own minds and methods on the manners and
literature of their country. ' He was the first Englishman — it
may be the first individual of Gothic race — who exchanged the
gorgeous images of the old mythology for the chaster beauties
of Christian poetry.' From the sixth to the twelfth century,
indeed, he seems to have been the great model whom all tried to
imitate, though but few could equal. He was the acknowledged
Father of English Poetry until Chaucer came and established
a greater claim to that title. When, in the reign of King John,
his body was discovered, it appears to have excited as much
reverence as those of the kings and saints by which it was sur-
rounded.

The manuscript which is supposed to contain the poems of
Credmon was given by Archbishop Ussher to Junius, and was left
by him to the Bodleian Library.

The following lines, from Caedmon's Paraphrase, ma}' be
looked upon as a specimen of Anglo-Saxon poetry :

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 47

THORPE'S TRANSLATION.

Tha of roderum waes An all-bright angel

Engel aslbeorht. Sent from above,

Ufan onsended. A man of beauteous form,

White scyne wer. In his garb of glory :

On his wuldor — haman. Who to them came for comfort,

Se him cwom to frofre. And for their lives' salvation,

& to feorh-nere. With love and with grace ;

Mid lufan & mid lisse. Who the flame scattered

Se thone lig tosceaf. (Holy and heaven-bright)

Halig and heofon-beorht. Of the hot fire,

Hatan fyres. Swept it and dashed away,

Tosweop hine & toswende. Through his great might,

Thurh tha swithan miht. The beams of flame ;

Ligges leoma. So that their bodies were not

That hyra lice ne waes. Injured aught.
Ovviht geegled.

The lines are a part of the Song of Azariah.

CYNEWULF

TH£ second period of Old English poetry begins with Cynewulf,
whose name in Latin is Kenulphus. Mr. Shaw says he was a
monk of Winchester, and Abbot of Peterborough in 992, who
was ' highly eulogized by a local historian.' In the opinion of
many critics he was a native of Northumbria, but, according to
others, a Mercian. ' It is difficult,' says Mr. Chambers, ' to
conceive how a poet so well acquainted with the sea and the
coasts of the sea should have written in Mercia. A Mercian
might have been acquainted with the sea, but not impassioned
by it as Cynewulf proves he is. Moreover, the sadness of his
poetry, the constant regret for vanished glory, does not suit
the life in Mercia at this time, when, from 718 to 796, ^Ethelbald
and Offa had made Mercia the greatest kingdom in England ;
but does suit the life in Northumbria, when, from 750 to 790,
that kingdom had fallen into anarchy and decay. There are
other critics who place him much later than the eighth
century.'

Cynewulf signed his name in runic letters to four poems.
These are Juliana, Crist, The Fates of the Apostles, and Elene.
The two first are in the Exeter Book, and the third and fourth in
the Vercelli Book. Elene was written when he was ' old and
ready for death.' It contains 1,320 lines. Its subject is the
finding of the True Cross by the Empress Helena. Other poems

48 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

have been attributed to him. All his poems were religious in
subject and in tone. His greatest hero was Jesus Christ. ' The
time is coming when his name will be more highly honoured
amongst us, and his poetry better known. He had imagination ;
he anticipated, at a great distance, the Nature-poetry of the
nineteenth century, especially the poets of the sea. . . . The
heroic passages in his poems link us to our bold heathen fore-
fathers, and yet are written by a Christian. Their spirit is still
the spirit of England.'

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH

Flourished circa 1152. Died 1154

GEOFFREY, or Jeffery, of Monmouth, was a celebrated British
historian who flourished in the reign of Stephen. He was born
at Monmouth, and probably received his early education in the
Benedictine monastery which flourished near that place. Tradi-
tion still points out the remains of a small apartment which is
said to have been his study, but, unfortunately, the building
thus indicated gives proof of an age greatly posterior to the time
of the historian. Geoffrey became Archdeacon of Monmouth
and, later, Bishop of St. Asaph, being consecrated in 1152. It
is said by Magdeburg centuriators that he became a Cardinal
also, but there is no clear proof of this.

Considerable obscurity hangs over the real origin of the
Chronicle, or history, with which his name is associated. Leland,
Bale, Pits, and Price inform us that Walter Mapes, or Calenius,
then Archdeacon of Oxford, having amassed, during his travels
in Armorica, an amount of materials illustrative of early British
history, placed them in the hands of Geoffrey of Monmouth, for
the purpose of getting them translated and arranged by that
scholar. Nothing could have been more congenial to Geoffrey's
tastes. He devoted himself to the task, and in a short time
produced a chronicle of Britain in Latin prose, and a life of the
Caledonian Merlin in Latin hexameters. Mr. Turner, in his
Vindication of the A ncient British Poems, says : ' I believe the
book of Geoffrey of Monmouth to be his own composition, and
to abound with fable.' The Chronicle is divided into nine books.
The work is altogether an extremely entertaining one, whatever

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 49

may be its value as a contribution to historical literature. It
was versified in the Norman dialect by Wace, and again in English
by Layamon ; and it is to it that vi»owe Shakespeare's affecting
story of King Lear, that of Sackville's Ferrex and Porrux, some
of the finest episodes in the Polyolbion, and the exquisite fiction
of Sabrina in the masque of Comus,

THE -TRAVELLER'S SONG

(Date uncertain)

The Traveller's Song is found in the celebrated Exeter MS., which
was given to the Cathedral by Bishop Leofric in the reign of
Edward the Confessor. It may have been written in the latter
half of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century. It
professes to chronicle the travels of a certain Gleeman, or wander-
ing minstrel, a contemporary of Eormanric and of ^Ertla. The
poem opens with a sort of preface (like that prefixed to Alfred's
metres), which is in verse and of almost equal antiquity with the
poem. The historic allusions in the poem are valuable, as is also
its geography. A translation of this poem has been furnished by
Mr. Conybeare, but ' his transcript was an inaccurate one, and
his version more faulty than it probably would have been had he
lived to publish it.' The following translation of a few character-
istic lines is from the pages of Mr. Guest :

Wide travel told — his word-store unlock'd,

He who most Greatness over Earth

And Nations visited. Oft in hall he flourish'd ;

Him from among the Myrgings, though mean in station,

Nobles rear'd. He, with Ealh-hild,

(Leal artificer of love !) in his first journey.

Sought the home of the fierce king,

East from Ongle — the home of Eormanric,

Wrathful trechour !

LAYAMON

Flourished circa 1180

LAYAMON, a priest of Ernesley-upon-Severn, translated Wace's
Brut d'Angleterre — a Norman-French version of Geoffrey of
Monmouth's history — into English verse. Wace's poem contains
15,300 lines, and these Layamon expanded into 32,250 lines. No

4

50 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

materials are to hand for a biographical sketch of the history of
this early writer. Mr. Ellis supposes that Layamon finished his
translation in 1180, and conceives our language to have been
formed between that period and 1216. It is written in alliterative
verse of the Old English character, mixed with rhyming couplets.
' With this poem, the Historia Britonum, or Brut, English litera-
ture takes its new start.' Layamon makes some notable additions
to the story as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Maister Wace.
Though he follows Wace very closely as a rule, his is but a loose
translation. The following is a specimen of Layamon's verses :

And of alle than folke
The wuneden ther on folde,
Wes thisses landes folk
Leodene hendest itald :
And alswa the wimmen
Wunliche on heowen.

That is :

And of all the folk that dwelt on earth was this land's folk the hand-
somest (people told) ; and also the women handsome of hue. ^ ,

Mr. Ellis regards the dialect of Layamon as an example
of pure Saxon. Campbell, in his Essay on English Poetry,
looks upon it as something intermediate between the old and
new languages — ' something,' to use his own beautiful simile,
' like the new insect stirring its wings before it has shaken off-
the aurelia state.'

The title of the ' English Ennius,' which was formerly applied
to Robert of Gloucester, may now fairly be transferred to
Layamon.

' The language of Layamon,' says Mr. Guest, ' may perhaps
(at least, in substance) be considered as the dialect spoken in
South Gloucestershire during the twelfth century. One of its
most striking peculiarities is its nunnation, if we may be allowed
to use a term already familiar to the scholar. Many words end
in n, which are strangers to that letter, not only in the Anglo-
Saxon, but in all the later dialects of our language ; and as this
letter assists in the declension of nouns, and the conjugation of
verbs, the grammar of this dialect becomes, to a singular degree,
complicated and difficult.'

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 51

ORM, AND THE ORMULUM

Orm, or Ormin, was an Augustinian monk who is supposed to
have lived somewhere near the borders of Lincolnshire. He
was author of the Ormulum, a very lengthy poem of which there
remains only a ' fragment/ which contains about ten thousand
lines ! It is called the Ormulum, we are told, ' because that Orm
it wrote.' It i^ dedicated to a brother monk named Walter.
The only extant MS. of his work is in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, but the Palaeographical Society have printed a tran-
script in which they have preserved the author's peculiarities of
spelling.

FROM THE 'ORMULUM.' TRANSLATION.

Nu, brotherr Wallterr, brotherr min Now, brother Walter, brother mine

Affterr the flaeshess kinde ; After the flesh's kind ;

Annd brotherr min i Crisstenndom And brother mine in Christendom

Thurrh fulluhht and thurrh trowwthe ; Through baptism and through truth ;

Annd brotherr min i Godess hus, And brother mine in God's house,

Yet o the thride wise, Yet on the third wise,

Thurrh thatt witt hafenn takenn ba Through that we have taken both

An reyhellboc to follyhenn, One rule-book to follow,

Unnderr kanunnkess had annd lif, Under a canonic's hood and life,

Swa summ Sannt Awwstin sette ; So as St. Austin set ;

Ice hafe don swa summ thu badd, I have done so as thou badest,

Annd forthedd te thin wille, And furthered thee thy will,

Ice hafe wennd inntill Ennglissh I have turned into English

Goddspelless hallyhe lare, The Gospel's holy lore,

Affterr thatt little witt tatt me After the little wit that to me

Min Drihhtin hafeth lenedd. My Lord hath lent.

Orm professes to have collected together in his Ormulum ' nigh
all the Gospels that are in the mass-book, through all the year,
at mass,' and to have accompanied each ' Gospel ' with an ex-
position of its meaning. This plan was suggested to him by
his brother, who, like himself, appears to have been a Regular
Canon.

THOMAS THE RHYMER

Flourished 1280

THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN, or Thomas the Rhymer, was a minstrel
whose name is ' great in traditional story.' He was the owner
of an estate which he bequeathed to his son. He is supposed to
have been the author of our first metrical romance. In the
latest edition of his Encyclopedia of English Literature Mr.
Chambers says : ' As is well known, the romance of Sir Tristrem

4—2

52 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

was attributed by its first editor, Sir Walter Scott, to Thomas
Rymour of Ercildoune or Earlston in Berwick, and not without
reason, since in the Chronicle of Robert Mannyng mention is
made of it in connection with Ercildoune and a Thomas ; and
the reference, with its mention of the strange English in which
the story is written, might well point, as has been supposed, to
an earlier Scottish text of which the extant version is a southern-
ized transcript. Unfortunately, a hundred years earlier, the
German version by Gottfried of Strasburg had also ascribed the
authorship of the plot to a Thomas, and this Thomas could not
possibly be Thomas of Ercildoune. It is possible, of course,
that the Thomas mentioned in the German version and Thomas
of Ercildoune both handled the story ; but it is possible also that
the fame of the prophecies of the Scottish Thomas led to the
work of his unknown namesake being ascribed to him, and in
the absence of any other Scottish work of this kind until many
years later, this second theory seems the more credible of the
two.' The story of Sir Tristrem was familiar to poetical anti-
quaries, being one of the ancient British legends taken up by the

Norman minstrels.

Glad a man was he

The turnament dede crie,
That maidens might him se

And over the walles to lye ;
Thai asked who was fre

To win the maistrie ;
Thai seyd that best was he

The child of Ermonie
In Tour :

Forthi chosen was he
To maiden Blanche Flour.

ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER

Circa 1297

THE metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, from the legend-
ary age of Brutus to the end of the reign of Henry III., is amongst
the most important literary works of this early period. It was
printed from incorrect MSS. by Hearne in 1724 (2 vols., 8vo.,
Oxon.), and this edition was reprinted in London in 1810. The
form of verse is the long line or couplet of fourteen syllables,
divisible into eight and six. In the earlier part of the poem
Geoffrey of Monmouth is closely followed. The latter part must
have been written after A.D. 1297.

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 53

Few materials exist to throw any light on the personal history
of Robert of Gloucester, but Selden has determined that he lived
in the reign of Edward I. Other antiquaries have discovered
that he was a monk of Gloucester, and Hearne supposes that
he was sent to Oxford by the directors of the great abbey of
Gloucester to take care of the youths whom they placed in that
university. The same writer says that he seems to have occupied
an old house on the west side of the Stockwell Street, on the site
of which was afterwards built Worcester College, originally called
Gloucester Hall. The most zealous efforts to discover the sur-
name of the monk have failed. It is not to be found in either
an ancient or modern hand in the Harleian manuscripts. Hearne
prudently forbears to say much as to the merits of the chronicler
as a poet, but he asserts that, of all books likely to prove useful
in the study of the Saxon tongue, none is so valuable as the
Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester. Camden speaks favourably
of his poetry, and contends that the merit of his verse lies in the
fact that it is so thoroughly English. Fuller, in his quaint and
forcible way, says of him :

' They speak truly who term him a rhymer, whilst such speak
courteously who call him a poet. Indeed, such is his language,
that he is dumb in effect to the readers of this our age without
an interpreter, and such a one will hardly be procured. Anti-
quaries, among whom Mr. Selden, more value him for his history
than his poetry, his lines being neither strong nor smooth, but
sometimes sharp.'

The following lines afford an example of the style of this poet :

Thus come lo ! Engelond into Normannes honde,

And the Normans ne couthe speke tho bote her owe speche,

And speke French as dude atom, and her chyldren dude al so teche ;

So that hey men of thys lond, thatof her blod come,

Holdeth alle thulke speche that hii of hem nome.

Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of hym wel lute,

Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss and to her kunde speche yute.

Ich wene ther ne be man in world contreyes none

That ne holdeth to her kunde speche, bote Englond one :

Ac wel me wot vor to conne bothe wel yt ys ;

Vor the more that a man con, the more worth he ys.

TRANSLATION.

Thus came lo ! England into the Normans' hand, and the Normans could
not speak then but their own speech, and spoke French as they did at home,
and their children did all so teach ; so that high men of this land, that of
their blood come, hold all the same speech that they took of them. For

54 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

unless a man know French, men talk of him very little ; but low men hold to
English and to their kindred speech yet. I ween there be not men in any
country in the world that hold not to their kindred speech, but in England
alone. But well men wot, it is well for to know both ; for the more that a
man knows, the more worth he is.

To the thirteenth century belong three important romances —
Sir Tristrem, Havelock the Dane, and King Horn — but their
authorship is not known.

Dr. Craik sums up the leading facts in the history of English
. metrical romance in the following manner :

1. At least the first examples of it were translations from the
French.

2. If any such were produced so early as before the close of
the twelfth century (of which we have no evidence), they were
probably designed for the entertainment of the mere commonalty,
to whom alone the French language was unknown.

3. In the thirteenth century were composed the earliest of
those we now possess in their original form.

4. In the fourteenth century the English took the place of
the French metrical romance with all classes. This was its
brightest era.

5. In the fifteenth it was supplanted by another species of
poetry, among the more educated classes, and had also to con-
tend with another rival in the prose romance ; but, neverthe-
less, it still continued to be produced, although in less quantity
and of an inferior fabric.

6. It did not altogether cease to be read and written until
after the commencement of the sixteenth century.

7. From that time the taste for this earliest form of our
poetical literature lay asleep, until, after the lapse of three
hundred years, it was re-awakened in this century by Scott.

ROBERT MANNYNG
Flourished circa 1350

EVIDENTLY an imitation of the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester
is that of Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne, as he is also
called. It is on a larger scale than the original, and the last
considerable work of the Old English period. It is ' even less
valuable, being mainly founded on Wace's version of Geoffrey

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 55

of Monmouth, and, save in the pleasant preface on the need of
books in the English language, is of no originality, literary or
historical.' It consists of two parts. The first, translated from
the Brut of Wace, reaches to the death of Cadwallader. The
second, which is based upon the Anglo-Norman of Peter de
I.angtoft, extends to the death of Edward I. (A.D, 1307). Only
the second part has been published, with the editions of Robert
of Gloucester. The language is ' a step nearer to modern English,
the most important changes being the use of s for th in the third
person singular, and the introduction of nearly the present forms
of the feminine personal pronoun. The first part is in the eight -
syllable line of Wace ; the second is partly in the same metre,
and partly in the Alexandrine, the heroic measure of the age.'

A passage occurs in one of Mannyng's poems, in which he
refers to his early education, and, according to the interpretation
of Mr. Ellis, it may be decided therefrom that he was a native
of Malton, and flourished as late as the reign of Edward III.
The lines are these :

In the Third Edward's time was I,
When I wrote all this story.
In the house of Sixille I was a throwe,
Dan Robert of Malton that ye know
Did it write for fellows' sake,
When thai willed solace make.

He appears to have occupied a somewhat conspicuous position
amongst the writers of his age, and Hearne observes that it is
probable he assumed the appellation of De Brunne, choosing
to let his proper surname fall into oblivion, like Robert of
Gloucester. Warton has observed that De Brunne had little
more poetry in him than Robert of Gloucester, but has added, as
some apology for him, that he has acquainted his readers that he
avoided high description and the usual phraseology of the
minstrels and harpers of his day. His lines on the subject give
a good idea of the language of the period :

I mad noght for no disours,
Ne for seggers, no harpeurs, ,
But for the luf of symple men,
That strange Inglis cannot ken.
For many it ere that strange Inglis
In ryme wate never what it is.
I made it not for to be praysed,
Bot at the lewed men were aysed.

56 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

This author also translated a treatise written in French by
the celebrated Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln,1 entitled Le
Manuel de Pechiez, or Manual of Sins, a work which throws
some strange light on the religious notions of the age, and on
the methods by which they were disseminated. Another work
of his was a translation of the treatise of Cardinal Bonaventura,
entitled Medytaciuns of the Soper of our Lord Jhesu.

RICHARD ROLLE
Died 1349

ABOUT the same time as Robert Mannjmg there flourished also a
poet named Richard Rolle. He was a hermit of the Order of
St. Augustine and a Doctor of Divinity, who lived a solitary
life near the Convent of Hampole in the neighbourhood of Don-
caster. He composed metrical paraphrases of parts of Holy
Scripture, and was also the author of a moral poem called The
Pricke of Conscience. It is not certain whether he composed the
latter in English. As it exists now, it has characteristics which
suggest the idea that it is a translation from a Latin original,
though in the first instance it was written by him. ' One agree-
able passage of this dull work ' is given here :

WHAT IS IN HEAVEN.

Ther is lyf without ony deth,

And ther is youthe without ony elde ;

And ther is alle manner welthe to welde ;

And ther is rest without ony travaille ;

And ther is pees without ony strife,

And ther is alle manner lykinge of lyf : —

And ther is bright somer ever to se,

And there is nevere wynter in that countrie : —

And ther is more worshipe and honour,

Than evere hade kynge other emperour.

And ther is grete melodie of aungeles songe,

And ther is preysing hem amonge.

And ther is alle manner frendshipe that may be,

And ther is evere perfect love and charite ;

And ther is wisdom without folye,

And ther is honeste without vileneye.

Al these a man may joyes of hevene call :

Ac yutte the most soveryn joye of alle

Is the sighte of Goddes bright face,

In wham resteth alle mannere grace.

1 William de Waddington. — CHAMBERS.

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 57

LAWRENCE MINOT

Flourished circa 1352

LAWRENCE MINOT, who flourished in the reign of King
Edward III., is described by Dr. Craik as ' perhaps the earliest
writer of English verse subsequent to the Conquest who deserves
the name of a poet.' We have from him ten poems written
in commemoration of the military successes of Edward. The
whole were published by Ritson in 1796 under the title of Poems
written in the Year 1352, by Lawrence Minot, with Introductory
Dissertations on. the Scottish Wars of Edward III., on his claim
to the throne of France, and Notes and Glossary. A reprint of
this volume appeared in 1825. The subjects of the poems are :
the Battle of Halidon Hill (1333), the Battle of Bannockburn (1314),
Edward's first invasion of France (1339), the Sea-fight in the
Zuin (1340), the Siege of Tournay (1340), the Landing of Edward
at La Hague (1346), the Siege of Calais (1346), the Battle of
Neville's Cross (1346), the Sea-fight with the Spaniards off Win-
chelsea (1350), and the Taking of the Guisnes (1352). The
poems are written in a truly martial strain. In support of his
statement that Minot was the first writer after the Conquest to
deserve the name of poet, Dr. Craik says of his verses :

' They are remarkable, if not for any poetical qualities of
a high order, yet for a precision and selectness, as well as a force,
of expression, previously, so far as is known, unexampled in
English verse. There is a true martial tone and spirit too in
them, which reminds us of the best of our old heroic ballads,
while it is better sustained, and accompanied with more refine-
ment of style, than it usually is in these popular and anonymous
compositions.'

The language of these poems is border dialect, which is near
akin to the Scotch. It is quite intelligible, and rhyme is regu-
larly employed in the composition, as is also alliteration. The
animated double triplet, with which we meet in the poems
of Sir Walter Scott, is to be found in the writings of Minot.

His works were comparatively unknown until the beginning
of the nineteenth century, when they were published by Ritson,
who praised them for the ease, variety, and harmony of the
versification. They have since been edited by J. Hall, in 1897.

58 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The following is an example of his dialect, which is
Northumbrian :

God that schope [formed] both se and sand

Save Edward, King of England,

Both body, saul, and life,

And grante him joy withowten strife !

For mani men to him er wroth,

In Fraunce and in Flandres both ;

For he defendes fast his right,

And tharto Jhesu grante him might !

WILLIAM LANGLAND

Flourished circa 1350

' THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN '

WE have numerous manuscripts of the Vision of Piers Plough-
man, the full Latin title of which is, Visio Willielmi de Petro
Ploughman, or, The Vision of William concerning Peter the
Ploughman. It is the earliest metrical composition which
we may still read with much pleasure. Its merit is very con-
siderable. Mr. Thomas Wright, who was the last to reissue it,
in 1842, divides the long line of previous editions into two,
thus making the poem consist of 14,696 verses, under twenty
sections, called Passus. Each of these sections relates a separate
vision, an arrangement which lends itself to the idea that it,
was originally put forth as a collection of shorter poems rather
than as one connected whole. As regards its subject the work
bears a resemblance to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the style
being allegorical, and descriptions being given of the manifold
temptations and difficulties which beset the path which mortals
have to tread in their daily life. It is freely sprinkled throughout
with sharp attacks upon the Church and its ministers, though
it is generally believed that the author himself was a priest
or a monk. Notwithstanding this fact, such attacks evidently
gave him a peculiar pleasure, for, though he from time to time
reverts to other topics, he invariably returns to his favourite
one, each time with renewed vigour and increased venom.
Though it was written long before either Puritanism or Pro-
testantism had any existence under those names, the tone of
the work is of such a Protestant character that at the time of
the Reformation three editions of it were printed in one year.

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 59

The author must undoubtedly be classed as the greatest of the
minor contemporaries of Chaucer. Though the plan of the work
is decidedly confused, it possesses in many passages extraordinary
poetical vigour.

The resemblance to the Pilgrim's Progress before mentioned
is thus summed up by Spalding : ' The likeness lies much deeper
than in the naming of such persons as Do-well, Do-better, and
Do-best, by which the parallel is most obviously suggested.
Some of the allegories are whimsically ingenious, and are worth
notice as specimens of, a kind of invention appearing everywhere
in the poetry of the Middle Ages. The Lady Anima who
represents the Soul of Man, is placed by Kind, that is Nature,
in a castle called Caro, or the Flesh ; and the charge of it is
committed to the constable Sir In-wit, a wise knight, whose
chief officers are five sons, See-well, Say-well, Hear-well, Work-
well, and Go-well. One of the other figures is Reason, who
preaches in the Church to the King and his knights, teaching
that all the evils of the realm are because of sin ; and among
the Vices, who are converted by the sermon, we see Proud-
heart, who vows to wear hair-cloth ; Envy, lean, cowering,
biting his lips, and wearing the sleeves of a friar's frock ; and
Covetousness, a bony, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, ill-clothed
caitiff. Mercy and Truth are two fair maidens ; and the
Diseases, the foragers of Nature, are sent out from the planets
by the command of Conscience, before whom Old Age bears a
banner, while Death in his chariot rides after him. Conscience
is besieged by Antichrist, who, with his standard-bearer Pride,
is most kindly received by a fraternity of monks, ringing their
convent-bells, and marching out in procession to greet their
master.'

The poem was twice recast by its author, with the result that
there are three separate versions of it. The A text, which is
the shortest, is of the year 1362. The B text, which is the best,
is of the year 1377. The C text may be reckoned as of the
year 1380.

The poem is without rhyme, being indeed a revival of the
alliterative style of verse which was still found in some of the
romances of the time. Dr. Percy shows, in his Reliques,
that it was probably borrowed from the Icelandic Scalds.

The old alliterative metre of these latter may be described

60 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

as a verse, with a strong caesura in the middle, containing, in
the first half, two accented words beginning with the same
letter ; which letter is also the initial of the accented syllable
in the second half of the measure. In Piers Ploughman the
alliteration falls upon three accented syllables in each couplet
— that is, on both those of the first line and on the first in the
second line (though sometimes it falls upon the second).

Little is known of the author of this remarkable work, but it
is generally believed that his name was either Robert or William
Langland. Dr. Collier says he was born in Shropshire about
1300, and was a secular priest and a Fellow of Oriel College,
Oxford, but other historians will not be positive even as to his
name, considering that, in common with other particulars
concerning him, to be no more than a matter of conjecture.
For instance, Monsieur Jusserand, the author of a charming
essay entitled Piers Ploughman : a Contribution to the History
of English Mysticism, observes with some humour : ' Our excuse
for putting " la charrue avant les bceufs " must be that there
are no " bceufs." This is his apology for describing the poem,
as we have endeavoured to do, before mentioning its author.
As regards anything which may be called evidence we are limited
to some scanty notes on a manuscript or two. On the Ash-
burnham MS. is written ' Robert or William Langland made
Pers Plowman.' On a manuscript which is preserved in Dublin,
this inscription is traceable : ' Memorandum : Quod Stacy de
Rokayle pater Willielmi de Langland, qui Stacius fuit generosus
et moriebatur in Sheptone under Whicwode, tenens domini
Le Spenser in comitatu Oxon ; qui predictus Willielmus fecit
librum qui vocatur Perys Ploughman.' The characters are
said to belong to the fifteenth century. No contemporary
writer mentions the name of Robert or William Langland,
but some historians have dwelt upon the internal evidence
which they discern in a single line of the poem itself :

I have lived in londe, quoth I ; my name is long Wille.

This, they say, if read backwards, suggests the name Wille
Longlonde — a form of anagram by no means uncommon. In
spite of the paucity and uncertainty of the details which are
available, Professor Skeat and Monsieur Jusserand have built

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 6r

up thereupon two interesting biographies of this remarkable
and mysterious poet.

The author of Piers Ploughman had experience of that
' sincerest form of flattery,' imitation, and in his day he enjoyed
as much popularity as did Bunyan in a later age. A poem,
entitled The Creed of Piers Ploughman, written some twenty
or thirty years after the Vision, is sometimes ascribed to the
pen of Langland, but it is more likely to be the work of a con-
temporary whose identity has not been revealed. The only
other poem which Langland is generally accredited with is
one which is preserved in the Cambridge University Library,
written on the last page of a MS. of Piers Ploughman. It
is called A Poem on the Deposition of Richard II. It is a
short poem and ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence,
a fact which has led some critics to consider it unfinished. But
it is more likely that it was left so designedly, ' because the news
of the murder of the King formed a tragic but logical peroration.'
The poem is generally called Richard the Redeless, from its
opening lines.

The Vision of Piers Ploughman begins as follows :

In a summer season, That I was in a wilderness,

When soft was the sun, Wist I never where ;

I shoop me into shrouds1 And, as I beheld into the east

As I a sheep2 were : On high to the sun,

In habit as an hermit I seigh a tower on a toft

Unholy of werkes, Frieliche ymaked,6

Went wide in this world, A deep dale beneath,

Wonders to hear ; A donjon therein,

Ac on a May morwening With deep ditches and darke,

On Malvern hills And dreadful of sight.

Me befel a ferly,a A fair field full of folk

Of fairy me thought. Found I there between,

I was weary for-wandered, Of all manner of men.

And went me to rest The mean and the rich,

Under a brood bank, -Werking and wandering

By a burns side ; As the world asketh.

And as I lay and leaned, Some putten hem to the plough,

And looked on the waters, Playden full seld,7

I slombered into a sleeping, In setting and sowing

It swayed so mury.4 Swonken8 full hard,

Then gan I meten And wonnen that wasters9

A marvellous sweven5 With gluttony destroyeth.

1 I put myself into clothes. 2 Shepherd. 3 Wonder.

4 Sounded so pleasant. 5 Dream. 6 Handsomely built.

7 Played full seldom. 8 Laboured.

9 Won that which wasters with gluttony destroy.

62 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

JOHN GOWER

Circa 1327-1408

A REMARKABLE poet of the Chaucerian period was John
Gower, who may be described as the most interesting of the
contemporaries of the Father of English poetry. The exact
date of his birth is not known, but it is probable he was born
about the year 1327. He was called ' Moral Gower ' by Chaucer,
and ' Ancient Gower ' by Shakespeare. Though the available
details of his history are both scanty and uncertain, it is known
that his family was a noble one, and the name is now borne
by one of the most illustrious families in England. He was
a friend of Chaucer, who may be said to have admired both
the poet and his writings, inasmuch as he was not above borrow-
ing an idea from him now and then. Gower was a very scholarly
man, and wrote in Latin, French, and English. He was educated
at Merton College, Oxford. He is said to have been a kinsman
of Sir Robert Gower, whose Manor of Kentwell, in Suffolk,
he inherited. He has been identified by some writers with Sir
John Gower, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and by
others with a clerk of the same name who was Rector of Great
Braxted, in Essex. But neither of these suppositions can bear
the test of investigation. A modern writer, Mr. G. C. Macaulay,
says, in his Complete Works of John Gower :

' There is nothing in Gower 's writings to suggest the idea
that he was an ecclesiastic. He distinctly calls himself a layman
in the Mirour de I'Omme. The statement of Leland that he
practised as a lawyer seems rather improbable, in view of the
way in which he here (Speculum Meditantis] speaks of lawyers
and their profession. Of all the secular estates that of the
law seems to him to be the worst, and he condemns both advo-
cates and judges in a more unqualified manner than the members
of any other calling. Again, the way in which he speaks of
physicians seems almost equally to exclude him from the pro-
fession of medicine. Of all the various ranks of society which
he reviews, that of which he speaks with most respect is the
estate of Merchants. ... He speaks of " our City," and has
strong feelings about the interests of the city of London. At
the same time there is no definite evidence that Gower was a

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 63

merchant. His references to the dearness of labour and the
unreasonable demands of the labourer are what we might expect
from a man who had property in land ; but again we have no
sufficient evidence that Gower was a landowner in the ordinary
sense of the word. . . . Though a thorough believer in the
principle of gradation in human society, he constantly empha-
sizes the equality of all men before God, and refuses absolutely
to admit the accident of birth as constituting any claim to
" gentilesce." He has a just abhorrence of war. . . . He is
a citizen of the world no doubt, but an Englishman first, and
he cares intensely for the prosperity of his native land. Even
when he writes in French it is for England's sake —

O gentile Engleterre, a toi j 'escrits.

He was a man of fairly wide general reading, and thoroughly
familiar with certain particular books, especially the Bible,
all the works of Ovid, and the writings of Peter de Riga.'

Gower's greatest work is the Confessio Amantis, or Confession
of a Lover, written in the octosyllabic romance metre. It is
a curious epic, with a very romantic plot. The lover betakes
himself to his Father Confessor, a priest of the temple of Venus.
The advice which the priest gives him is garnished with moral
tales taken from the repertories of the Middle Ages, to which
are added a host of moral, ethical, and metaphysical musings,
and some lectures on chemistry. The philosophy of Aristotle
is also touched upon. At last, when the heart of the lover has
been probed to the utmost, he turns out to be too old to care.
The work was written in English.

This poem, which is almost unanimously accounted dull
and tedious, pursues its monotonous course through more than
thirty thousand verses. ' The faults are general tediousness,
and a strong tendency to feebleness,' says Mr. Spalding, who,
however, admits that the language is smooth and easy, and
that there is not a little that is exceedingly agreeable in descrip-
tion. Mr. Ellis declares that so long as Moral Gower keeps to
his morality he is impressive, wise, and sometimes almost
sublime, adding that his narrative is often quite ' petrifying.'

The rising of Wat Tyler in 1381 was the occasion of Gower's
poem Vox Clamantis, which was written in Latin distichs. An
excellent edition of this work was printed by the Rev. H. O. Coxe

64 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

for the Roxburghe Club in 1850. The first book describes the
rising of Wat Tyler in an allegorical disguise. The second
has a long discourse on Fatalism. The third points out how
all orders of society must suffer punishment for their misdeeds.
The fourth is dedicated to the cloistered clergy and friars.
The fifth is addressed to the military. The sixth contains an
attack on the lawyers, and the seventh sums up the moral of
the whole work, represented in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar,
as interpreted by the prophet Daniel. There are also some minor
Latin poems, in leonine hexameters, amongst these being one
addressed to King Henry IV., in which the poet bewails his
blindness.

The Speculum Meditantis, or Speculum Hominis, or Mirour
de I'Omme, as it is variously called, was written in French. It
was entirely lost until 1895, when it was rediscovered. It now
forms the first volume of Mr. Macaulay's complete edition of
the poet's works, which is published by the Clarendon Press.
It is a poem containing nearly thirty thousand lines ' of passable
verse,' in which a classification of the virtues and vices leads
up to a survey of modern society, and this leads in turn to a
biographical sketch of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by whose instru-
mentality society was to be reformed. Some verses addressed
to Henry IV., after his accession, prove that Gower continued
to write in French to the end of his life. He was buried, accord:
ing to his own directions, in St. Mary Overy's, now the Collegiate
Church of St. Saviour, Southwark.

' In the course of nearly five centuries the tomb has undergone
many changes, and the present colouring and inscription are
not original. What we have now is a canopy of three arches
over an altar-tomb, on which lies an effigy of the poet, habited
in a long, dark-coloured gown, with a standing cape and buttoned
down to his feet, wearing a gold collar of SS, fastened in front
with a device of a chained swan between two portcullises. His
head rests on a pile of three folio volumes marked with the names
of his three principal works, Vox Clamantis, Speculum Medi-
tantis, Confessio Amantis. He has a rather round face with
high cheek-bones, a moustache and a slightly-forked beard,
hair long and curling upwards, and round his head a chaplet
of four red roses at intervals upon a band, with the words " Merci
ihf " (repeated) in the intervals between the roses ; the hands

POETS AND POEMS BEFORE CHAUCER 65

are put together and raised in prayer ; at the feet there is a lion
or mastiff lying. . . . Berthelette (1532) gives an interesting
account of the tomb : " John Gower prepared for his bones
a resting-place in the monastery of St. Mary Overes, where
somewhat after the old fashion he lieth right sumptuously
buried, with a garland on his head in token that he in his life
days nourished freshly in literature and science. And the
same monument, in remembrance of him erected, is on the North
side of the foresaid church, in the chapel of St. John, where he
hath of his own foundation a mass daily sung : and moreover
he hath an obit yearly done for him within the same church on
the Friday after the feast of the blessed pope St. Gregory.
Beside on the wall, whereas he lieth, there be painted three
virgins" — Charitie, Mercye, and Pite. "And thereby hangeth
a table, wherein appeareth that who so ever prayeth for the
soul of John Gower, he shall, so oft as he so doth, have a thousand
and five hundred days of pardon." About 1600 Stow notes
that the virgins were all " washed out and the image defaced by
cutting off the nose and striking off the hands."

I thenke make
A boke for Englonde sake,
The yere sixtenthe of King Richard ;
What shall befalle here-afterward,
God wote, for nowe upon this side
Men seen the worlde on every side
In sondry wise so diversed
That it wel nigh stant all reversed.

MINOR POETS BEFORE CHAUCER

Aldhelm (circa 656-709) was the most distinguished pupil of
Adrian, and founder of the abbey of Malmesbury. He wrote,
in hexameters, De Laude Virginitatis and a poem on The Seven
Cardinal Virtues. ' His poetry/ says Mr. Shaw, ' is turgid and
full of extravagant conceits.' He was a native of Sherborne,
of which he eventually became Bishop.

Bceda (672-735), or the Venerable Bede, was ' the master of
the time ' in which he lived, and ' a perfect type of the outward

5

66 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH POETRY

repose and intellectual activity of monastic life in its best aspect.'
He was the author of forty-five works, theological, scientific,
grammatical, and historical. As a poet he does not claim much
of our attention, being merely the author of ' some correct but
lifeless Latin poems,' of which that dedicated to the history of
the great men of the school of York is the best.

Alcuin (circa 735-804) was a native of York, who was placed
in a convent in his infancy, and subsequently trained in the school
of Archbishop Egbert. He was a prolific writer in prose, and
also fertile in the composition of Latin verse. His Elegy on the
Destruction of Lindisfarne by the Danes is accounted his best
work.

Alfred the Great (849-901), ' whose character was even greater
than his renown as a warrior, ruler, and law-giver, was also a
king in English literature.' He was a lover of poetry rather than
a poet, and is chiefly to be remembered as a translator of historical
works, such as those of Orosius and Bede, Boethius, and St.
Augustine. His poetical works were not numerous. The ease
with which he remembered, and the diligence with which he
collected, the songs sung by the wandering gleemen would furnish
an excuse for including his name in a history of poetry, but he
is chiefly remembered in histories of English literature as the
' Father of English prose.'

Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford, was a prolific writer in
prose and poetry. He wrote poems in Latin, Anglo-Norman,
and Leonine verse. He flourished in the reign of Henry II.
His chief subject was the legend of Arthur. He wrote the
Confession of Golias, a satire levelled at the clergy and the
Church.

Maister Wace (died after 1171), the earliest Anglo-Norman
translator, was a native of Jersey. About the year 1160 he
rendered into verse the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth under
the title of Brut d'Angleterre. His version, in turn, became the
source of the Brut of Layamon. He also wrote, in French, the
Roman du Rou (Romance of Rollo). Wace was made a Canon
of Bayeux by Henry II.

Joseph of Exeter, or Josephus Iscanus (died circa 1210), was the
author of a Latin poem called De Bello Trojano, which is one of

MINOR POETS BEFORE CHAUCER 67

the last and best examples of the regular Latin poetry. It was
so popular that it was used in schools. He also wrote a Latin
poem called Antiocheis, the subject of which was Richard's
expedition to Palestine. It is now almost entirely lost.

Stephen Langton (d. 1228) was a Cardinal and a writer of
French verse. There is a manuscript sermon of his in the
British Museum which contains a pretty song entitled La belle
Aliz. The fair Alice has been gathering flowers in a garden,
and the author weaves from this a garland of praise for the
Blessed Virgin. He was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign
of John.

Geoffrey de Vinsauf (circa 1198), noted as a ' chronicler/ was
the author of a regular poem, entitled De Nova Poetrid, which
he addressed to Pope Innocent III. It is a work of ' great
merit, containing interesting allusions to contemporary history.'
Vinsauf wrote metrical chronicles in both French and Latin.

Canute (1017-1036), the Danish Sovereign, is said to have
composed a song on hearing the singing of the monks in Ely
Cathedral as he rowed past in a boat on the river. Of this
song one verse has been preserved by the monk of Ely, who
wrote in the year 1166, or thereabouts. Even after the lapse of
a century and a half it continued to enjoy much popularity.
Mr. Chambers says : ' The language is still so intelligible that
we may suspect the, monk of having slightly modernized it in
accordance with the English of the middle of the twelfth century.

FRAGMENT OF A BALLAD COMPOSED BY CANUTE.

Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely,
That Cnut Ching rew thereby ;
Rovveth, cnihtes, naer the lant,
And here we thes muneches sseng.

TRANSLATION.

Merrily sung the monks within Ely,
(When) that King Canute rowed thereby ;
Row, knights, near the land,
And hear we these monks' song.

.Nigel Wircker, a monk of Canterbury, was the author of The
Mirror of Fools, which is a satire, and the most amusing of all
our earlier classical poems. The hero of the tale is Brunellus,

5—2

68 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

ambitious to a degree, with a craving for distinction, but, withal,
an ass. He studies at the University of Paris, and enters all the
monastic orders in turn. Disappointed with the monks, he
essays to establish a new order on his own account. Discovered
by his old master, he is compelled to resume his natural station,
and close his life in carrying panniers.

Michael of Kildare (1300) was the first Irishman who wrote
verses in English.

Richard the First, Cceur de Lion (1157-1199) was a king who
' deemed it a gentlemanly accomplishment to sing as well as act
the deeds of chivalry.' He cultivated and patronized the style
of the Troubadours.

Adam Davie (1307-1327) is the only English poet named in
connection with the reign of Edward II. Chambers says that
he was Marshal of Stratford-le-Bow, near London, that he
was a voluminous versifier, and wrote Visions, The Battle of
Jerusalem, etc.

Nicholas de Guild j or d is said to have been the author of an
original poem entitled The Owl and the Nightingale (1250-1260).

MINOR POETS OF THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY

SCOTTISH POETS

John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen (circa 1316-1395), was
the author of Bruce, a clever chronicle of the adventures of King
Robert I., in 13,000 rhymed, octosyllabic lines. He was the
greatest Scottish poet of his age, and takes high rank as the
Father of Scottish Poetry.

John de Fordun (d. circa 1385) was a canon of Aberdeen, and
the author of a chronicle which contains the legendary and
historical annals of Scotland down to the death of King David I.

Andrew Wyntoun (circa 1350-1420) was Prior of Lochleven.
He was the author of a metrical chronicle in nine books.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Circa 1328-1400

GEOFFREY CHAUCER has been honoured by the historian with
many high-sounding titles. Venerated by all as the Father of
English Poetry, he has also been called the Father of English
Literature and the Morning Star of Song. He was born in
London, but the exact date of his birth has not as yet been
ascertained with anything approaching certainty. Of the
Metropolis he says, in The Testament of Love :

' The city of London, that is to me so dear and sweet, in which
I was forth grown ; and more kindly love have I to that place
than to any other in earth, as every kindly creature hath full
appetite to that place of his kindly ingendure.'

Accounts are by no means agreed as to his origin and rank.
The name Chaucer is Norman, and on that account it is admitted
that he may have been of knightly descent, but the fact is by no
means conclusive as evidence. An interesting theory has lately
been propounded that the name, which is found in many different
spellings, is the same as Chauffecire, or Chaff-wax — i.e., an officer
who was employed to prepare the large wax seals for official
documents. But the more ancient and more likely derivation
is from chaussure, or shoes. In the translation of the Gospel
of St. Mark by Richard of Hampole, the hermit, the verse
' There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose
shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose ' is written
thus : ' A stalworther man than I schal come efter me, of whome
I am not worthi downfallande, or knelande, to louse the thwonge
of his Chawcers.' The name, at all events, was very common
in, London, and in the eastern counties. The poet's father and

69

70 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

grandfather both lived in London, besides possessing a small
property at Ipswich. Robert Chaucer, the poet's grandfather,
was a collector of customs on wine. John Chaucer, father of
Geoffrey, was a vintner whose place of business was in Thames
Street, London, and who went abroad in 1338 on the King's
service, returning in or before 1348 to assume the office of deputy
to the King's butler at Southampton.

Geoffrey was born, it is supposed, in 1328, or somewhat later,
but the first definite mention of him is in April, 1357, ' when, as
fragments of her household accounts show, a pair of red and black
breeches, a short cloak, and shoes were provided for him as one
Df the servants of the Lady Elizabeth, wife of Lionel. Duke of
Clarence. An entry of another payment to him shows that
Chaucer passed the winter of 1357-1358 at her seat at Hatfield,
in Yorkshire, where his future patron, John of Gaunt, was a
visitor.'

The future poet is said to have travelled a good deal while yet
a youth, and it has been stated that he afterwards studied law
at the Inner Temple. The two Universities of Oxford and Cam-
bridge have laid claim to him as a student within their walls.
With regard to these suppositions, the following words of Dr.
Collier are apt and interesting :

' The accounts of his early life are very uncertain. He calls
himself a Londoner ; and an inscription on his tomb, which
signified that he died in 1400 at the age of seventy-two, seems to
fix his birth in the year 1328. The words " Philogenet, of Cam-
bridge, Clerk," which occur in one of his earliest works in refer-
ence to himself, have caused it to be inferred that he was educated
at Cambridge. But VVarton and others claim him as an Oxford
man too, and, if he studied there, it is more than probable that
he sat at the feet of Wycliffe, and imbibed the doctrines of the
great reformer. An entry in some old register of the Inns of
Court is said to state that " Geffrey Chaucer was fined five
shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street," which
ebullition of young blood is the only recorded event of his sup-
posed law-studies at the Inner Temple.'1

With Chaucer ' a fresh beginning ' is made in English litera-
ture. ' He disregarded altogether the old English tradition, and

1 Speght gives this story on the evidence of a Mr. Buckley, who professed
to have seen the entry in the Temple records.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 71

even the work written at an earlier period under French influence.
For miracle-plays and romances he had a sovereign contempt,
and, for any influence which they exerted on him, the writings
of his fellow-countrymen, from Caedmon to Langland, might never
have existed. His masters in his art were the Frenchmen,
Guillaume Lorris, Jean de Meung, Deguilleville, Machault ; the
Latins, Ovid, Virgil, and Statius ; above all, the Italians, Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio.' He is distinguished, to begin with,
as the first notable English poet who was born in the Metropolis,
the first who was a layman, and the first who had any connection
with the Court.

Chaucer was a man of the world, a student, a soldier, and a
courtier. He was employed in affairs of delicacy and importance.
He was acquainted with the great and warlike reign of
Edward III., and versed in the history of the subsequent troubles
and disasters. His poetical genius was not fully developed until
he was well advanced in years. Indeed, it was not until he was
sixty years of age that he produced the perennial work by which
he is best known — the Canterbury Tales — ' simple and varied
as nature itself, imbued with the results of varied experience
and close observation, and coloured with the genial lights of a
happy temperament, that had looked on the world without
austerity, and had passed through its changing scenes without
losing the freshness and vivacity of youthful feeling and imagina-
tion.'

Chaucer accompanied the army with which Edward III.
invaded France, and was taken prisoner at the siege of Retters
about the year 1359. He was at this time honoured with the
patronage and friendship of John of Gaunt, whose nuptials (with
Blanche, heiress of Lancaster) he commemorates in his poem of
The Dream. The poet and John- of Gaunt subsequently became
connected by marriage. Chaucer married Philippa Pyckard, or
De Rouet, daughter of a knight of Hainault, and a Maid of Honour
to the Queen, and Gaunt married her sister Catherine, widow
of Sir John Swinford. In 1367 the poet was the recipient of a
grant of twenty marks (£200) from the Crown, and in 1372
he was appointed joint envoy on a mission to the Duke of
Genoa.

It is supposed that he made about this time a tour through the
North of Italy, visiting Petrarca at Padua on his way. This is

72 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

inferred from the following passage in the Canterbury Tales, the
clerk of Oxford saying : •

Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk —
Francis Petrarch, the laureat poet,
Hight this clerk, whose rhetoric sweet
Enlumined all Italy of poetry.

Edward III. subsequently appointed Chaucer Comptroller of
the Customs of wine and wool in the port of London. For this
office he was endowed with a perquisite of a pitcher of wine
daily from the royal dinner-table, which was commuted after a
while into a pension of twenty marks. He is further supposed
to have been endowed with a house near the royal manor at
Woodstock, where, it is thought from his description of it in The
Dream, he lived in great luxury. The following passage from
that poem is a reference to the picturesque scenery of Woodstock

Park :

And right anon as I the day espied,

No longer would I in my bed abide,

I went forth myself alone and boldely,

And held the way down by a brook side

Till I came to a land of white and green,

So fair a one had I never in been.

The ground was green y-powdered with daisy,

The flowers and the groves alike high ,

All green and white was nothing else seen.

Blenheim now stands on the site of the royal manor of Wood-
stock, but the spot which is here described may still be visited
by the poet's admirers.

' The opening of the reign of Richard II.,' says Mr. Chambers,
' was unpropitious to Chaucer. He became involved in the civil
and religious troubles of the times, and joined with the party of
John of Northampton, who was attached to the doctrines of
Wickliffe, in resisting the measures of the Court. The poet fled
to Hainault (the country of his wife's relations), and afterwards
to Holland. He ventured to return in 1386, but was thrown
into the Tower, and deprived of his Comptrollership. In May,
1388, he obtained leave to dispose of his two patents of twenty
marks each — a measure prompted, no doubt, by necessity. He
obtained his release by impeaching his previous associates, and
confessing to his misdemeanours, offering also to prove the truth
of his information by entering the lists of combat with the accused
parties. How far this action involved the character of the poet
we cannot now ascertain. He has painted his sufferings and dis-

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 73

tress, the odium which he incurred, and his indignation at the
bad conduct of his former confederates, in powerful and affecting
language in his prose work The Testament of Love.1

Chaucer's wife died in 1387. It is questionable whether this
event was a cause of great grief to him. He alludes to her in
the House of Fame, but in such a way as to leave behind the
impression that the lady in question was by no means of an
angelic temper. In 1388 he went his famous and eventful
Canterbury pilgrimage, apparently in no morose or melancholy
mood. In 1389 he received the appointment of Clerk of the
King's Works at Westminster, at a salary of two shillings per
diem, and in the next year the further office of Clerk of the Works
at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, was conferred upon him.
These two appointments he lost in June and July, 1391, and in
February, 1394, he received a pension of £20 a year from
Richard II., to which was added also a tun of wine. His history
for some years after this is clouded by obscurity, but it is sup-
posed that he lived in retirement at Woodstock, engaged in the
composition of his Canterbury Tales. A patent of protection
was granted to him in 1398. In 1399 Henry IV. was proclaimed
as King. The new monarch, who was the son of the poet's
brother-in-law, John of Gaunt, and also of that Duchess Blanche
whose beauty and death Chaucer had sung of in 1369, continued
the pension above-mentioned, and added forty marks besides.
Thomas Chaucer, the poet's son, was made Chief Butler and
Speaker of the House of Commons, and the poet himself was
granted a lease of tenement at Westminster at a rental of
£2 135. 4d. per annum. The date of this lease is December 24, 1399.
In this abode Chaucer breathed his last on October 25, 1400. The
house stood upon the site of Henry VII. 's Chapel in Westminster,
and close to that spot the ashes of the Father of English Poetry
were laid to rest, the first of the long line of illustrious writers
of English verse who repose within that glorious fane.

The many portraits of Chaucer which are within the reach of
the student depict a face which, in spite of the vicissitudes of
fortune, suggest ' a heart unsoured by care.' Even in old age,
when his locks hung in silver threads beneath his buttoned bonnet,
a joyous spirit shone forth from his features. His lips were

1 Mr. Shaw says The Testament of Love has been erroneously ascribed to
Chaucer.

74 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

fringed by a small, fair, well- trimmed beard, and the general
effect is pleasing. His ordinary dress is said to have consisted
of red hose, horned shoes, and a loose frock of camlet, reaching
to the knee, with wide sleeves fastened at the wrist.

Chaucer's are not merely the first poetical, but the earliest
grammatical works in English, written at a period when there was
no such thing as a grammar, or even a dictionary. The modern
lexicographer shows, by his references to Chaucer, that his works
became the grammar and dictionary of the language, from which
Spenser, Shakespeare, and other subsequent writers must have
largely drawn. They build their palaces on the foundation which
Chaucer laid. He has been bracketed with Dante and Petrarca
in what has been called the ' Triumvirate of the Mediaeval Poets.'
He was certainly our first humorist, as well as our first great poet.
Cowper has been given the credit of completing that pure English
style which Chaucer began.

The fame of Chaucer as a poet rests chiefly on his Canterbury
Tales. The main idea of the work may have been borrowed
Irom the Decameron of Boccaccio,1 in which a company of
people spending ten days in a country house near Florence tell
one hundred tales after dinner. The plan adopted by Chaucer
is as follows :

A party of thirty pilgrims assemble at the inn of the Tabard,
in Southwark, on their way to the tomb of St. Thomas a Becket
at Canterbury. The motley gathering is composed of specimens
of nearly every character then to be met with in the streets and
homes of England. The host of the inn joins the party, and
assumes the post of director. Each person is to tell two tales,
one in going, and the other on returning. The reader, however,
is only permitted to accompany them on a part of their journey,
and to hear twenty-four of the stories. The poet did not live
long enough to complete the work, and so the arrival at the shrine,
the tales on the return, and the promised supper with which the
adventure was to finish up, are left untold. We have, however,
the tales of the Knight, the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Man
of Law, the Shipman, the Prioress, the poet himself (to whom

1 Some eminent critics, notably Professor Lounsbury and Dr Skeat, are
firm in the conviction that Chaucer had never read a line of the Decameron.
Certainly no evidence of his having done so can be cited as proof. The work
was not known to Petrarca, and, since that is true of Boccaccio's friend and
correspondent, there is nothing very strange in the ignorance of an English-
man of letters who only spent a short time in Italy.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 75

two tales are assigned), the Monk, the Nun's Priest, the Doctor,
the Pardoner, the Wife of Bath, the Friar, the Sompnour, the
Clerk of Oxford, the Merchant, the Squire (whose tale is un-
finished), the Franklin, the second Nun, the Canon's Yeoman,
the Manciple, and the Parson. As a series of pictures of middle-
class life in England during the fourteenth century these tales
could not be surpassed. The Prologue, which explains the occa-
sion of the assemblage, and gives a description of the company,
is in itself a poem of considerable magnitude, and of remarkable
merit. In many of the tales themselves the diction rises to the
highest flights of reflective, heroic, and religious poetry. The
tales are all written in verse, with the exception of the Parson's
and Chaucer's second story, the allegorical account of Melibceus
and his wife Prudence. An immense variety of metrical forms
occurs in the poetical narratives, from the regular heroic rhymed
couplet down to the short, irregular, octosyllabic verse of the
Trouvere Gestours. ' All these forms,' says Mr. Shaw, ' Chaucer
handles with consummate ease and dexterity, and the nature of
the versification will often assist us in tracing the sources from
whence Chaucer derived or adapted his materials ; whether from
the fabliaux of the Provencal poets, the legends of the medieval
chroniclers, the Gesta Romanorum, or the early Italian writers,
Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio.'

The large number of French words in the writings of Chaucer
is easily accounted for by the fact that French was still spoken
by many of the better-educated people of England during the
poet's lifetime. Some of his words — such, for instance, as
aventure, licour. and corage — demand a French pronunciation.

The difficulty of reading and understanding the writings of
Chaucer may be considerably lessened by observation of the
following rules : (i) The final e in such words as love, hope, etc., is
to be pronounced as a separate syllable. (2) The termination
ed in verbs is invariably to be pronounced separately. The
grammar belongs to a transition stage betv/een the highly-
inflected Anglo-Saxon grammar and that of modern English,
which is almost devoid of inflections.

The tales may be divided into two classes — one pathetic, and
the other humorous. Of the first class the best are the Knight's,
the Sqiiire's, the Man of Law's, the Prioress's, and the Clerk
of Oxford's. The last-mentioned has been classed as the most

76 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

beautiful pathetic narrative in the whole field of literature. The
best of the comic tales are the Miller's, the Reeve's, the Sompnour's,
and those of the Canon's Yeoman and the Nun's Priest.

The earlier and minor works of Chaucer are chiefly translations
from Italian, Latin, and French. The Romaunt of the Rose
is an allegory, which goes to prove the truth of the old saying,
' The course of true love never did run smooth/ and is a richly
descriptive piece of versifying. The Court of Love and Troilus
and Creseide are supposed to have been written while the poet
was still at college. The Legende of Goode Women gives us some
incidents in the lives of Ariadne, Dido, Cleopatra, and other
classical heroines. In the House of Fame the poet is borne
in a dream to a beryl temple by a mighty eagle. The temple
is built upon a rock of ice, and here, from a throne of carbuncle,
the Goddess of Fame dispenses her favours.

Professor Ten Brink groups Chaucer's works into three periods,
thus :

i. Up to 1372. — Copied the French, as in Romaunt of the Rose.

2- T373 to 1384. — Influenced by the Italian Renaissance.

3. 1384 to 1400. — Individuality and originality of his own
genius.

A powerful criticism of Chaucer's genius is given by Professor
Craik in his History of English Literature. From it we quote
the following far-reaching and expressive words :

' Chaucer is the Homer of his country, not only as having been
the earliest of her poets (deserving to be so called), but also as
being still one of her greatest. The names of Spenser, of Shake-
speare, and of Milton are the only other names that can be placed
on the same line with his. His poetry exhibits, in as remarkable
a degree perhaps as any other in any language, an intermixture
and combination of what are usually deemed the most opposite
excellences. Great poet as he is, we might almost say of him
that his genius has as much about it of the spirit of prose as of
poetry, and that, if he had not sung so admirably as he has of
flowery meadows, and summer skies, and gorgeous ceremonials,
and high or tender passions, and the other themes over which
the imagination best loves to pour her vivifying light, he would
have won to himself the renown of a Montaigne or a Swift by
the originality and penetrating sagacity of his observation on
ordinary life, his insight into motives and character, the richness

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 77

and peculiarity of his humour, the sharp edge of his satire,
and the propriety, flexibility, and exquisite expressiveness of
his refined yet natural diction. Even like the varied visible
creation around us, his poetry too has its earth, its sea, and
its sky, and all the " sweet vicissitudes " of each. Here you
have the clear-eyed observer of man as he is, catching " the
manners living as they rise," and fixing them in pictures where
not their minutest lineament is or ever can be lost : here he is
the inspired dreamer, by whom earth and all its realities are
forgotten, as his spirit soars and sings in the finer air and amid
the diviner beauty of some far-off world of its own. Now the
riotous verse rings loud with the turbulence of human merriment
and laughter, casting from it, as it dashes on its way, flash after
flash of all the forms of wit and comedy ; now it is the tranquil-
lizing companionship of the sights and sounds of inanimate
nature of which the poet's heart is full — the springing herbage,
and the dewdrops on the leaf, and the rivulets glad beneath
the morning ray and dancing to their own simple music. From
mere narrative and playful humour up to the heights of imagi-
native and impassioned song, his genius has exercised itself in
all styles of poetry, and won imperishable laurels in all.'

The Canterbury Tales were printed by Caxton in 1478 and
1483, and reprinted by Pynson and Wynkin de Worde. In
1526 Pynson printed most of Chaucer's works in a volume in
three parts, but the first collected edition was that printed by
Godfray in 1532, and edited by Thynne. In 1598 and 1602
editions were edited by Thomas Speght, and Urry edited an
issue in 1721. In 1775-78 an excellent edition was produced
by Thomas Tyrwhitt, and the style of issue was still further
improved upon by Thomas Wright's edition for the Percy
Society in 1847, and Richard Morris's edition in Bell's Aldine
Classics. These were both founded on the Harleian MS. 7,334.
But no accurate text was possible until Dr. Furnivall founded
the Chaucer Society in 1866, and printed parallel texts from
all the best manuscripts available, including the Ellesmere,
which is now acknowledged to be the best. The Chaucer Society
has settled the true order of the Canterbury Tales, and established
the sources of many of Chaucer's poems.

Attempts to ' modernize ' the English of Chaucer with a view
to making the poems more attractive to readers of average

78 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

education must, as a rule, be accounted failures. One editor
says in his preface, by way of apology : ' In modernizing the
fourteenth-century English, no liberties have been taken with
the text that are not necessary to enable the ordinary reader to
follow the poetry with ease and understanding. Sometimes, no
doubt, the rhythm suffers. But when it is a question of sacri-
ficing sound or sense, the former has gone by the board.' He
discreetly adds : ' This edition is not for students of Chaucer.
It will only make them wild and dispose them to homicide.'

If any apology be due for ' modernization,' it will perhaps be
sufficient to point out that it is the fashion with editors of the
works of Chaucer so to do. Mr. Clarke, in his work on The
Beauties of Chaucer, makes an ample apology for following this
fashion, in these forcible words : ' In the first place, for some
centuries there was no orthography fixed — so little so, indeed, that
I believe I am correct in stating that even Sir Walter Raleigh
wrote his own name three several ways. But Chaucer gave him-
self considerable license with regard to orthography. He not
merely altered the composition of words at the terminations of
his lines that they might rhyme to the eye as well as to the ear,
but he would even, upon occasion, give a different termination
to them to make them rhyme to the ear in the first instance.'
As an example of this, among others, line 1039 °f tne Clerk's Tale
is cited, in which the personal pronoun me is altered into mo,-
to make it rhyme with also. Mr. Clarke goes so far as to contend
that every edition of Chaucer varies not only with its predecessor
in the spelling of certain words, but even with itself in the spelling
of the same word.

It is hoped that the following selections, as well as the form in
which they are presented, will be satisfactory and helpful even
to ' students of Chaucer.'

FROM THE 'CANTERBURY TALES'

THE PARSON

A good man there was of religion
That was a poore parsoun1 of a town ;
But rich he was of holy thought and werk :
He was also a learned man — a clerk2

1 In low Latin, Persona.

- A scholar. The clergy alone could read and write in the Dark Ages.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 79

That Christes gospel truely would preach ;

His parishens devoutly would he teach.

Benign he was and wonder diligent,

And in adversity full patient :

And such he was yproved often sithes.

Full loth were him to cursen for his tythes ;

But rather would he given out of doubt,

Unto his poore parishens about,

Of his off'ring and eke of his substance :

He could in little thing have suffisance.1

Wide was his parish — houses far asunder,

But he ne left, nought for no rain ne thunder,

In sickness and in mischief to visite

The farthest in his parish much and lite,

Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff.

This noble ensample to his sheep he gaff, —

That first he wrought and afterward he taught ;

Out of the gospel he the wordes caught,

And this figure he added yet thereto, —

That if gold ruste, what should iron do ?

For if a priest be foul on whom we trust,

No wonder is a lewed2 man to rust.

And shame it is, if that a priest take keep,

To see a smutted shepherd and clean sheep.

Wele ought a priest ensample for to give

By his cleannesse, how his sheep should live.

A knight there was, and that a worthy man,
That, fro the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalry,
Truth, and honour, freedom, and courtesy.
Full worthy was he in his lordes war,
And thereto had he ridden, no man farre,
As well in Christendom as in Heathenesse,
And ever hbnoured for his worthiness.

At Alisandre3 he was when it was won ;
Full oftentime he had the board begun
Aboven alle nations, in Prusse.
In Lettowe4 had he reysed,5 and in Russe,
No Christian man so oft of his degree.
In Gernade at the siege eke had he be
Of Algesir,6 and ridden in Belmarie.7
At Leyes was he and at Satalie,
When they were won ; and in the Create Sea8
At many a noble army had he be.
At mortal battles had he been fifteen,
And foughten for our faith at Tramicene,
In listes thr'ies and aye slain his foe.
This ilke9 worthy Knight had been also

1 Sufficiency. - Layman.

3 Alexandria was captured by Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, in

365-

4 Lithuania. 5 Travelled.

6 Taken from the Moorish King of Grenada in 1 344.

7 Supposed to be in Africa. 8 The Mediterranean. M Same.

80 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Sometime with the Lord of Palatie

Agen another heathen in Turkey ;

And evermore he had a sovereign prise,

And, though1 that he was worthy, he was wise ;

And of his port as meek as is a maid.

He never yet no villany ne said,

In all his life, unto no manner wight.

He was a very perfect gentle Knight.

* * * * *

With him there was his son, a younge Squire,
A lover and a lusty bachelor,
With lockes crull, as they were laid in press.
Of twenty year of age he was I guess.
Of his stature he was of even length ;
And he had been sometime in chevachie2
In Flanders, in Artois, and in Picardy,
And borne him well, as of so little space,
In hope to standen in his ladys grace.

Embroidered was he, as it were a mead
All full of freshe flowers white and red.
Singing he was or fluting all the day :
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide ;
Well could he sit on horse, and fair ride.
He coulde songes make, and well indite,
Joust, and eke dance, and well pourtray and write.
So hot he loved that still by m'ghtertale3
He slept no more than doth the nightingale.
Courteous he was, lowly, and serviceable,
And carved before his father at the table.4

The above are taken from Mr. Scrymgeour's selections. The
antique spelling is slightly modified.

THE CLERK OF OXFORD

A clerk ther was of Oxenforde also,
That unto logike hadde long ago.
As lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he was not right fat I undertake ;
But looked holwe, and thereto soberly.
Ful thredbare was his overest courtesy.
For he hadde geten him yet no benefice,
He was nought worldly to have an office.
For him was lever han, at his beddes hed,
Twenty bokes clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophic,
Than robes rich, or fidel, or sautrie :
But all be that he was a philosophre,
Yet had he but litel gold in cofre ;
But all that he might of his friendes hente,5
On bokes and on lerning he it spente ;
And besily gan for the soules praie
Of hem that gave him wherewith to scolaie.

1 As well as. 2 Military service.

3 Night-time. 4 One of the functions of a squire. 5 Obtain.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 8r

Of studie toke he most cure and hede.
Not a word spake he more than was nede ;
And that was said in forme and reverence,
And short and quike, and full of high sentence :
Souning in moral vertue was his speche ;
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.

THE MILLER

The Miller was a stout carl for the nones,
Ful bigge he was of braun, and eke of bones ;
That proved wel ; for over all ther he came,
At wrastling he wold bere away the ram.
He was short-shuldered, brode^ a thikke gnarre,1
That n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of barre,
Or breke it at a renning with his hede.
His berd as any sowe or fox was rede,
And therto brode, as though it were a spade :
Upon the cop right of his nose he hade
A wert, and thereon stode a tufte of heres
Rede as the bristles of a sowes eres :
His nose-thirles black were and wide.
A swerd and bokeler bare he by his side.
His mouth as wide was as a forneis :
He was a j angler, and goliardeis.-

A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune,
And therewithall he brought us out of touno.

ON THE DUPLICITY OF WOMEN

The world is full of variance
In everything, who taketh heed,
That faith and trust, and all Constance,
Exiled be, there is no drede,3
And save only in womanhead,
I can ysee no sikerness ;4
But for all that yet, as I read,
Beware alway of doubleness.

Also that the fresh summer flowers,
The white and red, the blue and green,
Be suddenly with winter showers,
Made faint and fade, withouten ween,5
That trust is none, as ye may seen,
In no thing, nor no steadfastness,
Except in women, thus I mean ;
Yet aye beware of doubleness.

Sampson yhad experience

That women were full true yfound ;

When Dalila of innocence

With sheares 'gan his hair to round ;

1 A knot in a tree. 2 A man of jollity.

3 Fear. 4 Steadfastness. 5 Doubtless.

6

82 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

To speak also of Rosamond,
And Cleopatra's faithfulness,
The stories plainly will confound
Men that apeach1 their doubleness.

Single thing is not ypraised,
Nor of old is no renoun,
In balance when they be ypesed,2
For lack of weight they be borne down,
And for this cause of just reason
These women all of righteousnesse3
Of choice and free election
Most love exchange and doubleness.

L'ENVOYE

O ye women ! which be inclined
By influence of your nature
To be as pure as gold yfined,
And in your truth for to endure,
Armeth yourself in strong armure,
(Lest men assail your sikerness),
Set on your breast, yourself t'assure,
A mighty shield of doubleness.

THE HOST

Great cheere made our Host us everich one.
And to the supper set he us anon,
And served us with vitail of the best ;
Strong was the wine, and well to drink us lest.4
A seemly man our Hoste was with all
For to han been a marshal in an hall ;
A large man he was with eyen steep ;
A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap ;
Bold of his speech, and wise, and well y taught,
And of manhood ylaked0 right him naught :
Eke therto was he a right merry man ;
And after supper playen he began,
And spake of mirth amonges other things.
When that we hadden made our reckonings,
And said thus : Now Lordings, truely
Ye been to me welcome right heartily ;
For, by my troth, if that I shall not lie,
I saw nat this year swich a company
At ones in this herberwe6 as is now ;
Fain would I do you mirth an I wist how ;
And of a mirth I am right now bethought
To don you ease, and it shall cost you nought.
Ye gon to Canterbury ; God you speed,
The blissful martyr quite you your meed :
And well I wot as ye gon by the way
Ye shapen you to talken and to play ;
For truely comfort ne mirth is none
To riden by the way dumb as the stone ;
And therefore would I maken you disport,
As I said erst, and don you some comfort.

1 Impeach. '2 Weighed (Fr. pese). :f Justice.

4 It pleased us. 5 Lacked. 6 Inn.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 83

We will close this review of the life and works of Chaucer
with the following lines, said to have been his last, and written
on his deathbed :

Fly from the press,1 and dwell with sothfastness ;
Suffice unto thy good'2 though it be small ;
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness,
Press hath envy, and weal is blent" o'er all.
Savour4 no more than thee behoven shall ;
Rede well thyself, that other folk can'st rede,
And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede.5

Pain thee not each crooked to redress
In trust of her that turneth as a ball ;
Great rest standeth in little business ;
Beware also to spurn against a nalle ;6
Strive not as doth a crocke7 with a wall ;
Deemeth8 thyself that deemest others' deed,
And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede.

That thee is sent receive in buxomness ;a
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall ;
Here is no home, here is but wilderness ;
Forth, pilgrim, forth ! O beast out of thy stall ;
Look up on high, and thank thy God of all ;
Waiveth thy lust, and let thy ghost thee lead,
And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede.

1 Crowd. 2 Be satisfied with thy wealth.

:i Prosperity is ceased. * Taste. 3 Without fear.

(i Nail. 7 Pitcher. 8 Judge. 9 Humility.

6—2

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS
JOHN SKELTON

Circa 1460-1529

JOHN SKELTON was born in the county of Norfolk about the
year 1460. ' Up to 1500,' says Mr. Chambers, ' Skelton was a
highly respectable person, a royal tutor, bepraised by foreign
scholars ; after 1500 he became a country parson, always in
trouble with his bishop, a satirist, and at last an outlaw, obliged
to take sanctuary, though with some rich friends who still
favoured him. His poetical progression was from laboured
seven-line stanzas to the " ragged, tattered, and jagged " metre,
in which his abundant flow of words, his real feeling for rhythm
and music, his humour and very considerable learning, his
love of beauty, and his half-merry, half-savage raillery could
all find free vent.'

Skelton studied at Cambridge, if not at both Universities,
and began to publish poems between 1480 and 1490. He
graduated as poet laureate at Oxford before 1490. This was
a degree in grammar, including versification and rhetoric (see
Appendix). In 1498 he took Holy Orders, and eventually
became Rector of Diss, in Norfolk.

As a scholar Skelton had a European reputation. The great
Erasmus has called him Britannicarum liter arum decus et lumen,
or ' the light and ornament of English letters.' His Latin verses
are ' distinguished for their purity and classical spirit. As
for his English poetry, it is generally more of a mingled yarn,
and of a much coarser fabric.' Amongst his writings are The

84

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 85

Boke of Phylip Sparowe, which was written for Jane Scrope,
a pupil of the Black Nuns at Carrow, near Norwich, as a lament
lor a pet bird killed by a cat ; Ware the Hawke, written against
a ' peakish parson ' who followed the hawks into Skelton's
churchyard ; Colyn Cloute, an attack on the corruption of the
Church, with hits at Wolsey ; The Ttmnyng of Elynour Rum-
mynge, giving a description of the drunken revels of some women
at an ale-house, said to have been written for the amusement
of Henry VIII. ; a Speculum Principis, or ' Prince's Looking-
glass,' composed for the young prince when he was his tutor, and
Why come ye not to Court ?

Skelton's most notable satires are Colyn Cloute and Why come
ye not to Court ? The former is an attack upon the clergy as a
class. The latter is a violent attack on Cardinal Wolsey. It
seems that the poet had been in the habit of flattering Wolsey
while there seemed to be a possibility of his obtaining preferment
at the hands of the Cardinal. A prebendal stall, however, had
fallen vacant, and the Cardinal had found a more worthy recipient
of the honour. The disappointed poet gave vent to his rage in
a lampoon in which he charged Wolsey with avarice, and even
with graver faults. He also made spiteful allusions to his ' base
original ' and ' greasy genealogy,' stating in regard to the latter
that he had been ' cast out of a butcher's stall.' For this libellous
production the Cardinal ordered him to be arrested, but Skelton
fled to the sanctuary at Westminster, where he died in 1529.
Pope has referred to him as ' Beastly Skelton.'

The following is an example of the versifying of this poet :

FROM 'COLYN CLOUTE'

And if ye stande in doute
Who brought this ryme aboute,
My name is Colyn Cloute.
I purpose to shake oute
All my connyng bagge,
Lyke a clerkely hagge ;
For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and mothe eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pyth.
For, as farre as I can se,
It is wronge with eche degre
For the temporal te
Accuseth the spiritualte ;

86 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The spirituall agayne
Doth grudge and complayne
Upon the temporall men :
Thus eche of other blother
The tone agayn the tother :
Alas, they make me shoder !

THOMAS OCCLEVE
Circa 1370-1454

THE date of birth of Thomas Occleve, or Hoccleve, is uncertain,
but in a poem supposed to have been written in 1422 or there-
abouts he says : ' Of age I am fifty winters and three/ so pre-
sumably he was born about 1370. It is thought that he was a
native of London, but it is certain that he passed most of his
life there, living in Chester's Inn. He was originally intended
for the priesthood, but at the age of nineteen he entered the
office of the Privy Seal as a clerk. He was not a great
poet, and seems to have lived in straitened circumstances.
Henry IV. granted him an annuity of £13 6s. 8d., and, according
to his own statement, his earnings amounted to no more than
£4 additional to this meagre sum. Yet he was a ' spendthrift,'
we are told, and ' a weak creature who tried to win popularity
by spending more than he could afford.' Occleve's longest
poem is the Regement of Princes, dedicated to Henry V., when
Prince of Wales. It is written in Chaucer's seven-line stanza,
and is a dull and tedious work, except as regards its prologue,
which contains his best work. Male Regie recounts the youthful
follies of the poet. Dr. F. J. Furnivall has edited the Regement
of Princes and a volume of Occleve's minor poems for the Early
English Text Society.

The following lines are from the Male Regie de T. Occleve :

Wher was a gretter maister eek than I,
Or bet acqweyntid at Westmynstre yate
Among the taverneres namily,
And cookes whan I cam, eerly or late
I pynchid nat at hem in myn acate,
But payed hem as that they axe wolde ;
Wherefore I was the welcomer algate.
And for ' a verray gentilman ' y-holde.

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 87

JOHN LYDGATE
Circa 1373-1450

THE date of Lydgate's birth is not definitely known, but it is
certain that he enjoyed considerable distinction as a poet about
the year 1430. He was educated at Oxford, but appears to have
remained only a short time at that University. On leaving it,
he made a tour in France and Italy, and in both those countries
studied with diligence and profit. In the one poetry still retained
much of the beauty, and raciness which had characterized the
Provencal minstrelsy ; in the other Boccaccio had lately ingrafted
on the harmonious language of Dante and Petrarch all the
gaiety and varied attractions of romance. When he returned
to England he devoted himself to poetry, drawing the subjects
of almost all his pieces from Boccaccio and other French authors,
and, in some cases, only translating them. Chaucer, Gower,
and Lydgate have allusions in their poems to almost every
fable and important event in Greek and Roman history, and
even the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle find a place in their
stories, and are dilated upon with minute ingenuity.

The catalogue which has been made of Lydgate's writings
by Ritson would imply that he was one of the most prolific of
authors. According to this list he produced no less than two
hundred and fifty separate pieces. His most important are
The Fall of Princes, The Siege of Thebes, and The Destruction
of Troy. Among his minor pieces we may mention The Dance
of Death, a translation made from the French, at the instance
of the Chapter of St. Paul's, ' who emploj^ed it to illustrate the
representations with which their cloister was decorated.' In an
elegant little poem on the Lyfe of Our Lady there are passages
which breathe an Italian sweetness. ' He was the best poet
of his age, for if Chaucer's coin were of greater weight for deeper
learning, Lydgate's was of a more refined standard for purer
language.' He followed his great master with a faithful, though
a mild and gentle spirit, and it should never be forgotten that
he was the first of our poets to infuse into the lafiguage the
sweetness and amenity of the Italian.

Dr. Schick, who edited Lydgate's Temple of Glass for the
Early English Text Society, in 1891, tells us that before he was
thirty the poet versified some of the fables of ^sop, and wrote

88 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

two poems, the Chorl and Bird, and Horse, Goose, and Sheep,
which were printed by Caxton subsequently. It is thought
that the Troy-Book, which contains thirty thousand lines,
occupied him until the }^ear 1420. In 1445 he wrote verses
for the entry of Queen Margaret into London, and about the
same time composed his poetical Testament. He wrote in all
of Chaucer's three chief metres.

The description of Fortune in The Fall of Princes would bear
comparison with the most admired personifications in the
classical writers. He says of her dress :

Her habyte was of manyfolcle colours,
Watchet blewe of fayned stedfastnesse ;
Her golde allayed like sun in watry showres,
Meyxt with grene, for change and doublenesse.

But it is in descriptions of morning, or of soft and bowery
shades, that the genius of Lydgate chiefly delighted. Take,
for example, the following :

Tyll at the last, among the bowes glade,
Of adventure, I caught a plesaunt shade ;
Full smothe, and playn, and lusty for to sene,
And soft as velvet t was the yonge grene :
Where from my hors I did alight as fast,
And on a bowe aloft his reyne cast.
So faynte and mate of werynesse I was,
That I me layd adoune upon the gras,
Upon a brinke, shortly for to telle,
Besyde the river of a cristall welle.
And the water, as I reherse can,
Like quicke-silver in his streames y-ran,
Of which the gravell and the brighte stone,
As any golde, agaynst the sun y-shone.

Lydgate entered the Benedictine Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds
before he was fifteen, and became a priest in 1397. In 1423 he
was made Prior of Hatfield Regis. The date of his death is
uncertain.

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

SCOTTISH POETS
JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND

1394-1437

ABOUT the beginning of the fifteenth century, and from that time
until the end of the first half of the sixteenth, Scottish poetry
reached a higher level than that of English writers of verse. The

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 89

remarkable gifts of King James the First of Scotland are amongst
the most notable evidences of this fact.

The life of this prince is an exemplification of the truth of the
old saying, ' Truth is stranger than fiction.' When he was a
little boy of about eleven years of age he was taken prisoner.
The Duke of Rothesay, his elder brother, had fallen a victim to
the criminal ambition of his uncle Albany ; and his father,
Robert III., anxious to save his surviving son from a like fate,
resolved to send him to the Court of France. Although a truce
had been declared between the two countries, the ship in which
he travelled was captured by an English cruiser off the coast of
Norfolk. He was taken, by command of Henry IV., to the
English Court — an event which overwhelmed his father with
such poignant grief that it literally brought his gray hairs with
sorrow to the grave. He remained in England from that time
until his release in 1424, living for the most part at Windsor
Castle, and receiving an education which ' matured him as a
knight, a statesman, a scholar, and a gentleman.' The gift
which was in him was stirred up by a careful study of the poetic
works of Chaucer and Gower. Excelling in every branch of
study and every kind of sport, he delighted chiefly in the music
of the harp and the composition of verses. After nearly twenty
years of exile and imprisonment, the policy or generosity of the
English Government allowed his ransom, and he returned to his
native country. He did not return alone. He had conceived a
strong passion for the Lady Joan Beaufort, and had married her
during his exile. Early one morning, as he looked from his
window in the Round Tower of Windsor, he had seen the fair
vision of this lovely daughter of the Duke of Somerset sauntering
amid the flowers. It was a case of love at first sight. To her
we are indebted, moreover, for the inspiration which gave its
colour to the poet's sweetest song. James was unquestionably
the cleverest of the royal Stuarts. He was possessed of all the
qualities of a true poet, besides being a wise king and an accom-
plished gentleman. He has been classed by some critics as the
equal of Chaucer in the art of poesy, but this is, perhaps, too high
praise. Yet now and then he rises to a very high level indeed,
and he is always polished and pleasing.

The end of the Poet-King was tragic. Early in the year 1437
he was barbarously murdered in the Dominican Monastery at

go A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Perth. Sir Robert Graham was the chief perpetrator of the foul
deed. Aware of the coming of his murderers, he had hidden in a
vault below the flooring of his private room, but they found him,
dragged him out, and cut him almost in pieces with sword and
knife.

King James's chief poem is the King's Quhair (or Book).
' Sleeplessly bewailing his unhappy lot, he rises from his couch
to attempt to forget his sorrows in the consolation of study. As
he looks out on a fresh morning, he suddenly beholds in the garden
beneath his prison tower a lady of transcendent beauty, the
sight of whom affects his heart with incurable love. He is
carried in vision by Hope to the Court of Venus, who, after
testing the purity of his attachment, sends him to Minerva.
She, after some virtuous advice, bids him go in quest of Fortune.
That goddess teaches him so to climb her wheel as to arrive at
the summit of desired felicity. The piece concludes with an
enthusiastic expression of gratitude for the blessing he enjoys
in his lady's love and worth.'

Besides being romantic and even pathetic, this poet could be
humorous at times. Two poems of this class are also ascribed
to him : Christ's Kirk on the Green, and Peebles to the Play. In
both of these he describes the merry-makings of the Scottish
peasantry.

FROM THE 'KING'S QUHAIR'

SPRING

CANTO II

In Vere, that full of virtue is and good,
When nature first beginneth her emprise,
That whilom was, by cruel frost and flood,
And showers sharp, oppressed in many wise ;
And Synthius 'ginneth to arise
High in the East, a morrow soft and sweet,
Upwards his course to drive in Ariete ;

Passit but midday four 'gre'is, even

Of length and breadth his angel wingis bright

He spread upon the ground down from the heaven ,

That for gladness and comfort of the sight.

And with the tickling of his heat and light,

The tender flowris openit them and sprad,

And in their nature thankit him for glad.

POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 91

JAMES FIRST BEHOLDS THE LADY JANE
CANTO II

Now there was made fast by the tower's wall,

A garden fair ; and in the corners, set

An herbere green, with wandis long and small

Railed about, and so with treiis set

Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,

That lyf1 was none, walking there forbye,2

That might within scarce any wight espy.

So thick the boughis and the leavis green

Beshaded all the alleys that there were,

And, midst of every herbere, might be seen

The sharp, green, sweet juniper,

Growing so fair, with branches here and there,

That, as it seemed to a lyf without,

The boughis spread the arbour all about.

And, therewith, cast I down mine eye again
Where as I saw, walking under the tower,
Full secretly, new comen her to pleyne,
The fairest or the freshest younge flower
That ever I saw, methought, before that hour ;
For which sudden abate, anon astert
The blood of all my body to my heart.

And though I stood abaisit tho a lyte,3
No wonder was ; for why ? my wittis all
Were so o'ercome with pleasaunce and delyte,
Only through letting of mine eyen fall,
That suddenly my heart became her thrall
For ever of free will ; for of menace
There wa's no token in her sweete face.

And in my head I drew right hastily ;
And eftesoons4 I lean'd it out again ;
And saw her walk that5 very womanly,
With no wight mo' but only women twain.
Then 'gan I study in myself and seyne ;
' Ah, sweet, are ye a worldly creature ?
Or heavenly thing in likeness of Nature ?

' Or are ye god Cupidis own princess,

And comen are to loose me out of band ?

Or are ye very Nature, the goddess

That have depainted with your heavenly hand

This garden full of flouris as they stand ?

What shall I think ? — alas ! — what reverence

Shall I mesters unto your excellence ?'

1 Living person. " Besides. 3 A little abashed.

4 Soon after. Coleridge uses eftsoons in the Ancient Mariner.

5 So. 6 Minister.

92 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

MINOR POET OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POET

Sir Thomas Clanvowe (fourteenth and fifteenth century) is a
name which was first mentioned in the history of English litera-
ture by William Morris in 1895, when, in editing the text of The
Cuckoo and the Nightingale for the Kelmscott Press, he stated
that Professor Skeat had discovered that at the end of the best
MSS. the author was called Clanvowe. In 1897 this information
was confirmed and expanded by Professor Skeat himself in the
supplementary volume of his Oxford Chaucer (1894-1897).

The beautiful romance of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale
was published by Thynne in 1532, and was attributed by him
and successive editors down to the days of Henry Bradshaw to
Chaucer. The historic and literary importance of The Cuckoo
and the Nightingale is great. It is the work of a poet who had
studied the prosody of Chaucer with more intelligent care than
either Occleve or Lydgate, and who therefore forms an important
link between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in English
poetry.1

MINOR POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY

SCOTTISH POETS

Blind Harry (flourished 1470-1492), or Harry the Minstrel,
was the author of a poem entitled William Wallace. It is written
in ten-syllable lines of heroic verse, and is ' not destitute of
vigorous and picturesque passages.'

Robert Henry son (circa 1430-1506) was ' doubtless the most
Chaucerian of the Scottish Chaucerians.' He was a monk or
schoolmaster of Dunfermline, was admitted a member of the
University of Glasgow in 1462, and practised for some time as a
notary public. His chief works are : The Moral Fables o
1 Precis of article in Encyclopedia Britannica.

MINOR POETS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 93

Orpheus and Eurydice ; The Testament of Fair Creseide, written
as a sequel to Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida ; and the beautiful
pastoral of Robin and Makyne, which is in Percy's Reliques.
His fables are bright, witty, and dramatic.

William Dunbar (circa 1460-1520) was a powerful and original
poet. His chief poem is entitled The Dance of the Seven Deadly
Sins, ' a fantastic and terrible impersonation, with the intense
reality of Dante and the picturesque inventiveness of Callot.'
He is generally looked upon by critics as the greatest and most
gifted of the old Scottish poets. He graduated at St. Andrews
in 1479, and afterwards became a Franciscan, but subsequently
' threw off the habit.' He also wrote The Thrissill and the Rois,
The Golden Targe, The Merle and the Nightingale, and The Lament
for the Markaris.

FROM ' THE LAMENT FOR THE MARKARIS '

Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals world is hot transitory,
The flesche is brukle,1 the Fena is sle,'2
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Gavin Douglas (circa 1472-1522) was a ' voluminous and
elevating ' poet. He was the third son of Archibald, Earl of
Angus, famous as ' Bell the Cat.' He was in Holy Orders, and
became Bishop of Dunkeld. His best-known work is a complete
translation of the Mneid of Virgil into the Scotch language.

Gavin Douglas condemned Caxton's translation of Virgil
thus:

Adherand to my protestatioun,
Thocht Williame Caxtoun, of Inglis natioun,
In pross3 hes prent ane bulk of Inglis gros,
Clepand it Virgill in Eneados,
Quhilk that he sais of Frensch he did translait,
It has na thing ado therwith, -God wait,
Nor na mair like than the devill and Sanct Austyne.

1 Brittle. 2 Fiend is sly. '•> Prose.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS
EDMUND SPENSER

1553-1599

EDMUND SPENSER, said to be ' of all the poets the most poetical,'
was born in London in 1553. He was a member of an illustrious
family, which, nevertheless, was by no means largely endowed
with this world's goods — or, at least, the future poet's share was
small. Coming two centuries after Chaucer, and being just eleven
years older than Shakespeare, he is accounted the greatest
English poet intervening between these two bright particular,
stars of poetical literature. He was educated at the University
of Cambridge, and shed great lustre on that seat of learning by
the marvellous store of practical knowledge which he acquired
and assimilated within its walls. Even the ' Satiric Nash '
speaks of him as ' the heavenly Spenser,' and it is not too much
to say that his qualities of mind gained for him the love of his
contemporaries, even as his unquestionable superiority placed
him above their envy. He has been described as standing alone
in the history of English poetical literature, inasmuch as he has
never been imitated with success. His power consists mainly in
a richness of despription and a power of vitalizing everything he
touches into an almost visible and tangible reality, rather than
in_mere mechanical skill in delineation of character. His style
is so unique that he may said to be ' a school in himself.' In
cadence and structure his language is essentially different from
that of any other writer of his time, and, indeed, from any writer

94

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 95

of any time. ' He describes to the eye and communicates to
the airy conceptions of allegory the splendour and vivacity of
visible objects. He has the exhaustless fertility of Rubens,
with that great painter's sensuous and voluptuous profusion of
colour.'

Our information with regard to the poet's early life is some-
what meagre. Though coming of a noble race, nothing is known
of his parents, nor can the historian state with certainty where
he went to school. At the age of sixteen he obtained a sizarship
at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and took the degree of M.A. in
1576. At the University he formed a friendship with Gabriel
Harvey, and this companionship exerted an influence over his
fortunes which was considerable. Harvey was a classical scholar,
whom the poet afterwards immortalized as Hobbinol in the
Shepherd's Calendar, published in 1579.

Having, it is thought, incurred the displeasure of the Master of
his college at Cambridge, Spenser is supposed to have become
a tutor to some young friend in the North of England. Just so
much may be said of his earlier years.

The beginning of his fame may be traced to an unfortunate
affair of the heart. A lady, whom he calls Rosalind, ' made a
plaything of his heart, and, when tired of her sport, cast it from
her.' The rejected and dejected lover took refuge in the art with
which Nature had so richly gifted him, and the attention of the
world was soon called to his genius by the publication of the
Shepherd's Calendar: Harvey induced the poet to come to
London, as a field more favourable to his muse, and introduced
him to ' Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of
Chivalry and Poesy.' From this it was but a step to an introduc-
tion to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sidney's uncle, who, in turn,
brought the poet into the presence-chamber of Queen Elizabeth
herself. For awhile the favour of the Court was evinced only
in a series of occasional small diplomatic appointments, but these
eventually culminated in his being chosen to accompany Lord
Grey de Wilton to Ireland as secretary, on the nomination of
that nobleman as Lord-Lieutenant. This took place in 1580,
and for the two following years Spenser continued in that country,
returning to England at the end of that period on the recall of
Lord Grey.

Four years afterwards the poet was rewarded for his services

96 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

by a royal grant of more than 3,000 acres in the county of Cork.
The estate, which was called Kilcolman, formed a part of the
forfeited lands of the rebel Earl of Desmond, of which a large
portion had already been allotted to Raleigh. The death of
Sidney in 1586 was a great blow to Spenser, for which a growing
friendship with Raleigh consoled him in some measure. He
married, probably in 1594, a lady named Elizabeth, ' in whose
honour he sang the sweetest marriage-song our language boasts.'1
About twelve years after his first settlement in his Irish home
a torrent of rebellion and revolt swept over the land. His castle
was attacked and burnt to the ground. The poet and his wife
had scarcely time to make good their escape. In their precipitate
haste their new-born child was left to perish in the flames.
Three months afterwards, impoverished and crushed with grief,
the poet died, January i6th, 1599, a^ an mn m King Street,
Westminster. In Westminster Abbey, near to the dust of
Chaucer by his own request, the ashes of Edmund Spenser were
laid to rest.

Critics vary considerably in their views regarding the genius
of Spenser. ' This poet/ says Hume, ' contains great beauties,
a sweet and harmonious versification, easy elocution, a fine
imagination ; yet does the perusal of his work become so tedious
that one never finishes it from the mere pleasure that it affords ;
it soon becomes a kind of task-reading.'

' We shall nowhere find/ says Campbell, ' more airy and ex-
pansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment,
or a finer flush in the colours of language than in this Rubens of
English poetry. . . . Though his story grows desultory, the
sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. He is
a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing though he speaks
too long.'

Hazlitt writes : ' Though much later than Chaucer, his obliga-
tions to preceding writers are less. He has in some measure
borrowed the plan of his poem from Ariosto ; but he has in-
grafted upon it an exuberance of fancy and an endless voluptu-
ousness of sentiment not to be found in the Italian writer. . . .
There is an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical
personages that almost vies with the splendour of ancient

1 She was not, as has been commonly assumed, a peasant girl, but
evidently a gentlewoman. — CRAIK.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 97

mythology. If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance,
all Spenser's poetry is fairyland. . . . The poet lays us in the
lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among
greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find
it, but as we expected to find it ; and fulfils the delightful
promise of our youth.'

And yet Ellis could write : ' It is scarcely possible to accom-
pany Spenser's allegorical heroes to the end of their excursions.
They want flesh and blood — a want for which nothing can
compensate. The personification of abstract ideas furnishes the
most brilliant images for poetry, but these meteor forms, which
startle and delight us when our senses are flurried by passion,
must not be submitted to our cool and deliberate examination.
. . . Personification protracted into allegory affects a modern
reader almost as disagreeably as inspiration continued to mad-
ness.'

The Faerie Queene is described by its author, in a preliminary
letter to Raleigh, as ' a continued allegory, or dark conceit,'
the heroine standing for ' the most excellent and glorious person '
of Queen Elizabeth. Many other more or less eminent personages
of the day are portrayed in the poem. It takes rank in litera-
ture as ' the most interesting allegory ever written,' which
' carries us on by making us forget that it is an allegory at all.'
It is marked throughout by a high moral tone, an exquisite sense
of beauty, and a sweet and melodious cadence. In short, it is
saturated throughout with the Divine spirit of poesy. ' It is a
labyrinth of sweet sounds that would cloy by their very sweet-
ness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted by
their continued variety of modulation.' ' It is the perfection of
melting harmony dissolving the soul in pleasure or holding it
captive in the chains of suspense.' The first three books were
published in 1590, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.1 In
1596 he published a new edition, with three additional books.
' Of the remaining six, which were to complete the original
design, two imperfect cantos of Muiabilitie only have been
recovered, which were introduced into the folio edition of 1609,
as a part of the lost book, entitled The Legend of Constancy '
(Todd's Life of Spenser).

1 The Queen bestowed upon the author, in February, 1591, a pension
of £$o.

98 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The stanza in which the Faerie Queene is written, which has
been copied successfully by Lord Byron and others, is now
known. as the ' Spenserian Stanza.'

Francis Turner Palgrave laid it down as an axiom that the
genius of Spenser did itself justice only in poems of some length,
and John Ruskin pointed out that the ' Poet of Beauty ' was only
half estimated because so few people took the pains to think out
his meaning, whereas no time devoted to profane literature was,
in his opinion, better rewarded than that spent earnestly in the
study of Spenser. The Faerie Queene may certainly be called ' a
poem of some length.' Speaking of its incompleteness, Mr. Shaw
says the paradox of Hesiod may be applied to it — the ' half is
more than the whole.'

The most notable of Spenser's poems published before the
Faerie Queene, which is his greatest work, are the Shepherd's
Calendar and Mother Hubberd's Tale. The former consists of
twelve poems called Eclogues. The shepherds are chiefly clergy
of the Church, their parishioners being the sheep. They include
Algrind, who is meant to represent Grindall, Archbishop of Can-
terbury ; and Morell, who is none other than the poet's enemy,
Aylmer, Bishop of London. This poem was reprinted four times
during Spenser's lifetime, between 1581 and 1597. It by no
means reaches the high level to which its author subsequently
rose as a poet. Mother Hubberd's Tale is a finer and more finished-
composition.

Besides these, he published at various times a number of other
poems, including Colin Clout's come Home again ; a translation
of Virgil's Culex ; The Tears of the Muses ; Hymns and Visions ;
Espousal Poems, Sonnets, etc. Unfortunately, a portion of his
work has been lost.

' When we look broadly at the poetic work of Spenser,' says
Mr. Edmund Gosse, ' we find that the Faerie Queene stands out
so massively that it dwarfs all his other achievements. Taking
this glorious fragment, then, as representative of his power and
quality, we see that the most prominent characteristic of Spenser
is his intense conviction of the paramount importance of beauty.
No poet has ever lived in whom the obsession of loveliness, in
person and scenery, in thought and act, in colour and sound, in
association and instinct, was so constraining as it is in Spenser.
He is led by beauty as by a golden chain, and his work has the

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 99

weaknesses inherent on a too persistent concentration of the mind
on this particular species of harmony. He lacks sublimity ; he
does not know the heightening power of austerity in treatment ;
he shrinks from all life that is not led in the mazes of an enchanted
forest or by the lustral waters of an ocean. Accordingly, his
stateliness and his fantastic pageant of the imagination have a
certain unreality about them, which his magic is seldom quite
intense enough to move. His scenes are too spectacular and too
phantasmal to give complete satisfaction to any but children and
poets.'

Yet Spenser has been acknowledged ' a better teacher than
Scotus or Aquinas.' His representations of womanhood, for
instance, are living sources of education. In support of this
statement we need only point to Florimel, Serena, Una, Amoret,
Britomart, and Belphcebe. Nor is he less happy in his masterly
treatment of the phenomena of the physical world. His in-
fluence as a ' master ' can be traced in the writings of Pope,
Shelley, Keats, and Byron. He has been called the poet's poet ;
Thomson and Collins copied him, and Cowley and Dryden
acknowledged their indebtedness to him. When Pope was
' lisping in numbers ' at the age of twelve, he wrote a poem in
which he tried to reproduce the beauties of the Faerie Queene.
' In the masque of English poets Edmund Spenser rides on a white
horse and blows a golden trumpet, the champion of beauty and
Paladin of poets.'

It is always interesting to note the opinion which one great
poet forms of another, and the highest praise has been given to
Spenser by Southey, who expresses his admiration in the follow-
ing noble lines :

My Master dear arose to mind,

He on whose song, while yet I was a boy,

My spirit fed, attracted to its kind,
And still insatiate of the growing joy ;

He on whose tomb these eyes were wont to dwell,

With inward yearnings which I may not tell ;

He whose green bays shall bloom for ever young,
And whose dear name whenever I repeat,

Reverence and love are trembling on my tongue ;
Sweet Spenser — sweetest bard ; yet not more sweet

Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise,

High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries.

' In the period between Chaucer and Surrey,' says Dr. Court-
hope, in his exhaustive work on English poetry, ' we see the

7—2

TOO A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

medieval current running with preponderating power, blended
only with a faint national colour derived from Chaucer's dramatic
genius, and with an equally slight tinge of classicism, reflected
from his study of Ovid, Virgil, and Statius. The increasing
strength of the Renaissance is indicated, through the sixteenth
century, by a profusion of superficial classical imagery, which
mixes itself, in nai've incongruity, with the allegorical forms
peculiar to the learning of the Middle Ages. The spirit of this
period is illustrated and summed up in the poetry of Spenser.'

FROM 'THE FAERIE QUEEN E '

BELPHCEBE
BOOK II., CANTO III

Her face so fair, as flesh it seemed not,

But heavenly portrait of bright angels' hue,

Clear as the sky, without blame or blot,

Through goodly mixture of complexions due ;

And in her cheeks the vermeil red did shew

Like roses in a bed of lilies shed,

The which ambrosial odours from them threw.

And gazers sense with double pleasure fed,

Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead.

In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame,

Kindled above at the heavenly Maker's light,

And darted fire-beams out of the same,

So passing persant1 and so wondrous bright,

That quite bereav'd the rash beholder's sight ;

In them the blinded god his lustful fire

To kindle oft assayed, but had no might ;

For, with dread majesty and awful ire

She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desire.'3

Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,

Like a broad table did itself dispread,

For Love his lofty triumphs to engrave,

And write the battles of his great godhead :

All good and honour might therein be read ;

For there their dwelling was. And when she spake,

Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed ;

And twixt the pearls and rubins:t softly brake

A silver sound, that heavenly music seemed to make.

Upon her eyelids many Graces sat,

Under the shadow of her even brows,

Working belgardes and amorous retrate ;4

And everyone her with a grace endows,

And every one with meekness to her bows :

So glorious mirror of celestial grace,

And sovereign monument of mortal vows,

How shall frail pen describe her heavenly face,

For fear, through want of skill, her beauty to disgrace !

1 Piercing. a Belphcebe is Chastity.

3 Teeth and lips. 4 Fair looks and amorous aspect.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 101

THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS
BOOK II., CANTO VIII

And is there care in Heaven ? And is there love

In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,

That may compassion of their evils move ?

There is : — else much more wretched were the case

Of men than beasts. But O ! th' exceeding grace

Of highest God, that loves his creatures so,

And all his works with mercy doth embrace,

That blessed angels he sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked men, to serve his wicked foe !

How oft do they their silver bowers leave

To come to succour us that succour want !

How oft do they with golden pinions cleave

The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant,

Against foul fiends to aid us militant !

They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,

And their bright squadrons round about us plant ;

And all for love and nothing for reward :

O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard ?

CONCLUSION OF MERLIN'S PROPHECY
BOOK III., CANTO IV

Nor shall the Saxons' selves all peaceably

Enjoy the crown, which they from Britons won

First ill, and ruled wickedly :

For, ere two hundred years be full outrun,

There shall a Raven,1 far from rising sun,

With his wide wings upon them fiercely fly.

And bid his faithless chickens overrun

The fruitless plains, and with fell cruelty,

In their avenge, tread down the victor's surquedry.2

Yet shall a third both these and thine subdue :

There shall a' lion from the sea-bord wood

Of Neustria3 come roaring, with a crew

Of hungry whelps, his bataillons bold brood,

Whose claws were newly dipt in curdled blood.

That from the Daniske tyrant's head shall rend

Th' usurped crown, as if that he were wood,

And the spoil of the country conquered

Amongst his young ones shall. divide with bountyhead.

Tho,4 when the term is full accomplished,

There shall a spark of fire, which hath long while

Been in his ashes raked up and hid,

Be freshly kindled in the fruitful isle

Of Mona,6 where it lurked in- exile ;

Which shall break forth into bright burning flame,

And reach into the house that bears the style

Of royal majesty and soveriegn name :

So shall the Britons' blood their crown again reclaim.

1 The Raven was the enchanted standard of the Danes.
'-' Presumption. 3 The Prankish name of Normandy. 4 Then.

•"' The Mortimers and the Tudors were Welsh families, or of Welsh
alliance.

102 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Thenceforth eternal union shall be made

Between the nations different afore,

And sacred Peace shall lovingly persuade

The warlike minds to learn her goodly lore,

And civil arms to exercise no more :

Then shall the royal virgin reign, which shall

Stretch her white rod over the Belgic1 shore

And the Great Castle smite so sore withal,

That it shall make him shake, and shortly learn to fall.

But yet the end is not.' — There Merlin stayed.

SONNET XXVI

Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere ;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough ;
Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh near ;
Sweet is the firbloom, but his branches rough ;
Sweet is the Cyprus, but his rind is tough ;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill ;
Sweet is the broomflower, but yet sour enough ;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill ;
So, every sweet with sour is temp'red still,
That maketh it be coveted the more :
For easy things, that may be got at will,
Most sorts of men do set but little store.
Why then should I account of little pain,
That endless pleasure shall unto me gain ?

FROM 'THE EPITHALAMION '

My love is now awake out of her dreams,

And her fair eyes, like stars that dimmed were
With darksome cloud, now show their goodly beams

More bright than Hesperus his head doth rear.
Come now, ye damsels, daughters of Delight,

Help quickly her to dight !
But first come, ye fair Hours, which were begot,

In Jove's sweet paradise, of day and night,
Which do the seasons of the year allot,
And all that ever in this world is fair,

Do make and still repair !

And ye three handmaids of the Cyprian Queen,
The which do still adorn her beauty's pride,
Help to adorn my beautifullest bride !
And as ye her array, still throw between

Some graces to be seen ;
And as ye use to Venus, to her sing,
The whiles the woods shall answer and your echo ring.

*****
Behold, while she before the altar stands,

Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesses her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks,
And the pure snow with goodly vermeil stain
Like crimson dyed in grain ;

1 Elizabeth assisted the Netherland Provinces in their revolt against
Spain. The Great Castle is the Castilian Power.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 103

That even the angels, which continually

About the sacred altar do remain,
Forget their service, and about her fly,

Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair

The more on it they stare :
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governed with goodly modesty,
That suffers not one look to glance awry,
Which may let in a little thought unsound.
Why blush ye, Love, to give to me your hand,

The pledge of all our band ?
Sing, ye sweet angels ! Alleluia sing,
That all the woods may answer and your echo ring !

And ye, high Heavens ! the temple of the gods,
In which a thousand torches flaming bright

Do burn, that to us, wretched earthly clods,
In dreadful darkness lend desired light ;

And all ye Powers which in the same remain,
More than we men can feign,

Pour out your blessing on us plenteously,
And happy influence upon us rain,

That we may rise a large posterity,

Which from the earth, which may they long possess
With lasting happiness,

Up to your haughty palaces may mount,
And for the guerdon of their glorious merit,
May heavenly tabernacles there inherit,

Df blessed saints for to increase the count !
So let us rest, sweet Love, in hope of this,

And cease till then our timely joys to sing,
The woods no more us answer, nor our echo ring.

JOHN LYLY

Born about 1554. Died 1600

If all the Earthe were paper white,

And all the sea were incke,
'Twere not enough for me to write
As my poore hart doth thinke.

THIS poetical sentiment was written by John Lyly, described
by Ben Jonson as ' a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that
wears clothes well, and in fashion ; practiseth by his glass how
to salute ; speaks good remnants, notwithstanding the base viol
and tobacco ; swears tersely, and with variety ; cares not what
lady's favour he belies, or great man's familiarity ; a good
property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow
another man's horse to praise, and backs him as his own. Or,
for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his mer-

104 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

chant, only with the gingle of his spur, and the jerk of his wand.'
Thus rare Ben Jonson is supposed to have portrayed, in the
' Fastidious Brisk ' of his Every Man out of His Humour, the poet
who is justly celebrated in the history of English poetry as
' Shakespeare's chief exemplar.'

John Lyly was born in Kent in 1553 or 1554, and was educated
at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. He produced nine plays between
the years 1579 an(^ *6oo. These works were chiefly written for
Court entertainments, and were performed by the scholars at
St. Paul's. Queen Elizabeth is said to have honoured him with
her patronage, but the poet, in the course of a petition for the
post of Master of the Revels, thus addresses her Majesty :

' For these ten years I have attended with an unwearied
patience, and now I know not what crab took me for an oyster,
that in the midst of your sunshine, of your most gracious aspect,
hath thrust a stone between the shells to eat me alive that only
live on dead hopes.'

Of Lyly's nine plays, only two are poetical, one being in
rhyme, and another in blank verse. As a poet, he is ' in his
happiest efforts elegant and fanciful ; but his genius was better
suited for the lighter kinds of lyric poetry than for the drama.'
He is remarkable as having contributed a word to the English
language. ' The singular affectation known by the name of
Euphuism was,' says Dr. Craik, ' like some other celebrated
absurdities, the invention of a man of true genius — John Lyly,
a dramatist and poet — the first part of whose prose romance of
Euphues appeared in 1578 or 1579.' The same writer also adds :
' Although Lyly, in his verse as well as in his prose, is always
artificial to excess, his ingenuity and finished elegance are fre-
quently very captivating. Perhaps, indeed, our language is,
after all, indebted to this writer and his Euphuism for not
a little of its present euphony.' The words euphuize, euphuism,
euphuistic, and euphuist, all owe their origin to the style of this
once popular book. Euphuism is defined as an affected or
bombastic style of language ; or, secondarily, a high-flown
expression.

But the chief claim of this poet to remembrance may be
traced to the fact that his plays exerted a considerable influ-
ence in the formation of Shakespeare's style. ' In comedy
Lyly is Shakespeare's only model ; the evidence of the latter's

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 105

study and imitation of him is abundant, and Lyly's influence is
of a far more permanent nature than any exercised on the great
poet by other writers. It extends bej^ond the boundaries of
mechanical style to the more important matters of structure
and spirit ; and it is further traceable in Ben Jonson's method
of handling history, pastoral, and the comedy of humours.'
The words just quoted are from a new volume entitled The
Complete Works of John Lyly, now for the first time collected
and edited from the earliest quartos by R. Warwick Bond.
Blount, who publishec] the Second Folio of Shakespeare in 1632,
says of Lyly : ' This poet sat at the Sunne's Table. Apollo
gave him a wreath of his own Bayes, without snatching. The
Lyre he played on had no borrowed strings.' The following
is one of his songs :

O cruel Love ! on thee I lay
My curse, which shall strike blind the day :
Never may sleep, with velvet hand,
Charm thine eyes with sacred wand ;
Thy gaolers shall be hopes and fears ;
Thy prison-mates groans, sighs and tears ;
Thy play, to wear out weary times,
Fantastic passions, vows, and rhymes.
Thy bread be frowns, thy drink be gall,
Such as when you Phao call ;
The bed thou liest on be despair,
Thy sleep fond dreams, thy dreams long care.
Hope, like thy fool, at thy bed's head,
Mocks thee till madness strike thee dead,
As, Phao, thou dost me with thy proud eyes ;
In thee poor Sappho lives, for thee she dies

The same phrases are frequently to be found in the plays of
Shakespeare and those of Lyly. The following are some notable
examples :

Shakespeare says in As You Like It :

, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Lyly says :

That the fayrer the stone is in the Toade's head, the more pestilent
the poyson is in her bowelles ; that talk the more it is seasoned with
fine phrases, the lesse it savoreth of true meaning.

Again, Shakespeare says :

Two may keep counsel, putting one away.

Lyly says :

Two may keep counsaile if one be away.

io6 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And, again, Shakespeare says :

The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
Lyly says :

The empty vessell giveth a greater sound than the full barrell.
Many passages which bear a close resemblance to the advice
of Polonius are to be found in the Euphti.es of Lyly. For
example :

Polonius. Give thy thought no tongue.

Euphues. Be not lavish of thy tongue.

Polomus. Beware of entrance to a quarrel.

Euphues. Be not quarrellous for every light occasion.

Polomus. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

Euphues. It shall be there better to hear what they say, than to
speak what thou thinkest.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 1
1564-1616

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born in Henley Street, Stratford-on-
Avon, in April, 1564. The actual day is not known with cer-
tainty, but he was baptized on the 26th of that month, and, if
tradition is to be credited, the day of his death was the anni-
versary of his birth. In the time of Shakespeare, the town of
Stratford had a population of 1.400. Its buildings and houses
were of a poor order of architecture, with the exception of the
parish church and the Guildhall. In the latter, companies of
strolling players would at times perform, when their services
were secured by the Corporation of the little town.

The future poet's father was John Shakespeare, described as a
well-to-do wool-comber, who was himself in a smaller way a
man of many parts. He made and sold gloves, was a small
farmer, and though he was totally devoid of education, he rose
to some distinction in his native town, being in his later years
High Bailiff, Chamberlain, and Alderman. His wife was Mary
Arden, his landlord's daughter. Her father had died a year
before the marriage took place, leaving her the possessor of con-
siderable property, her family having been Warwickshire gentry

1 Professor Dowden says : ' The poet's name is rightly written Shakespeare,
rightly also written Shakspere. If I err in choosing Shakspere I err with the
owner of the names."

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 107

since before the Conquest. Two of the family had filled posts
of distinction in the household of King Henry VII. William
was the eldest son of John and Mary Shakespeare, but he had
two elder sisters. Besides these three, they had a daughter,
who survived the poet, and is mentioned in his will ; another
daughter, who died at an early age ; and three sons — Gilbert,
Richard, and Edmund. The last-mentioned was an actor, and
died in 1607.

Not far from the stately parish church of Stratford, with its
' tall gray spire, springing from amid embowering elms and
lime-trees,' there still stands a portion of the house in which
the greatest of English poets was born. According to Dr.
Collier, ' Sun and rain and air have gradually reduced the
plastered timber of its old neighbours into powder ; but its
wood and lime hold together still, and the room in which baby
Shakespeare's voice uttered its first feeble wail. The dingy walls
of the little chamber are scribbled all over with the names of
visitors, known and unknown to fame. It is pleasant to think
that this shrine, sacred to the memory of the greatest English
writer, has been lately purchased by the English nation,1 so
that lovers of Shakespeare have now the satisfaction of feeling
that the relics, which tell so picturesque a story of the poet's
earliest days, are in safe and careful keeping.'

It is probable that William got all the regular teaching he
ever had at the Stratford Free Grammar School. Certain it is
that he could not have received any to speak of from his father
and mother, for neither of those good people could write. It is
to be noted, however, that in the reign of Elizabeth this accom-
plishment was by no means a usual one even in higher ranks of
society than that to which they belonged. The local Grammar
School was founded in the reign of Edward IV. ; it was one of
those endowed schools which stand as monuments of the pious
charity of former ages. To this institution, which exists at
the present day, William was sent by his parents. Aubrey, a
historian who died in 1700 or thereabouts, states a tradition to
the effect that the great dramatist had been in his earlier days
a schoolmaster in the country. Perhaps he was what is now
known as a pupil- teacher, employed to assist the regular staff
after he had passed through the lower classes in the school.
1 Dr. Collier wrote in 1861.

io8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

His education in classics appears to have been limited, but
in spite of the sneer of Ben Jonson, who stigmatized it as ' small
Latin and less Greek,' there is evidence in his writings that he
was by no means ignorant of these languages. Professor Dowden
says concerning this : ' That he had got by heart his Lily's Latin
Grammar, and was acquainted with the rudiments of that lan-
guage, is almost certain ; and it has been noticed that he uses
several English words — as, for example, the continents of rivers
for containing banks, quantity for value, and others — in senses
which would not occur to one who was absolutely ignorant of
Latin. Afterwards — perhaps during his London life — Shake-
speare seems to have learned something of French, and possibly
also of Italian.' It is certainly unquestionable that from an
early age he possessed a remarkable facility, amounting to a
genius, for acquiring the niceties, and mastering the subtleties,
of his own language. His store of English was vast. Mr.
Stopford Brooke tells us in an interesting and valuable footnote
that the great dramatist uses 15,000 words, and wrote pure
English. Out of every five verbs, adverbs, and nouns — e.g., in
the last act of Othello — four are Teutonic ; and he is more
Teutonic in comedy than in tragedy.

When Shakespeare was about fourteen years of age, his father
met with reverses which reduced him from a state of opulence
to a state of painful poverty, which continued for a number of
years — indeed, until his son became successful as a dramatist.
It is related, to the credit of the poet, that he maintained his
father in ease and comfort during his declining years. The old
man died in 1601. His father's poverty caused William to be
taken away from school earlier than he would otherwise have
been, and it is thought that he was obliged at a comparatively
earl)7 age to earn a living for himself, perhaps by assisting John
at his trade of wool-combing. But opinions are strangely at
variance upon this point. Besides the aforementioned state-
ment made by Aubrey to the effect that he became ' a school-
master in the country,' it is said that he was ' bound apprentice
to a butcher,' while some historians conclude from the number
and accuracy of the legal allusions in his pla}^s that he must
have spent some time in an attorney's office as a clerk.

In November, 1582, the Bishop of Worcester issued a license
for the marriage of William Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway upon

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 109

once asking of the banns. The reason for this haste became
obvious upon the birth of their first child, which took place on
the 26th of May, 1583. It was the wish of the bride's friends
that the child should be born in lawful wedlock. Richard
Hathaway, Anne's father, was a substantial yeoman, whose
home was at Shottery, a beautiful hamlet about a mile from
Stratford. He had died five months before the marriage.
Anne was eight years older than William, and it cannot be
stated with any certainty that the marriage was happy or un-
happy. They remained in Stratford for four or five years. In
1585 Anne gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith, who were
called after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, a married couple who
were friends of the poet. Hamnet was an only son, and died
in 1596. According to tradition, which must ever be the uncer-
tain basis for much of the history of Shakespeare, he left his
children in the country with his wife while he was earning his
living in the great city, paying an annual visit to his home.

The well-known story of the deer-stealing in Charlcote Woods
is without proof, but it is likely that his youth was of a nature
to foster the idea of it. Rowe, his first biographer, tells the
story thus :

' He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows,
fallen into ill company ; and, amongst them, some that made a
frequent practice of deer-stalking, engaged him, more than once,
in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote,
near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman,
as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and in order to revenge
the ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this,
probably the first, essay of his poetry be lost, yet it is said to
have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution
against him, to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his
business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter
himself in London.'

On doubtful points like this, one is fain to take refuge in
quotations from the most reliable authorities rather than to
speculate, or even to express an opinion in one's own words.
Dr. Dowden supplements the above by the following statement :
' Some of the details of this story are undoubtedly incorrect, but
there is good reason to believe that a foundation of truth under-
lies the tradition. Sir T. Lucy was an important person in the

no A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

neighbourhood — a Member of Parliament, one of the Puritan
party (with which our dramatist can never have been in sym-
pathy)— and about the time of this alleged deer-stealing frolic
was concerned in framing a Bill in Parliament for the preserva-
tion of game. Although he did not possess what is properly a
park at Charlcote, he had deer ; Shakespeare and his companions
may have had a struggle with Sir T. Lucy's men. A verse of
the ballad ascribed to the young poacher has been traditionally
handed down, and in it the writer puns upon the name Lucy —
" 0 lowsie Lucy " — in a way sufficiently insulting. It is note-
worthy that in the first scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Justice Shallow is introduced as highly incensed against Sir
John Falstaff, who has beaten his men, killed his deer, and broke
open his lodge ; the Shallows, like Shakespeare's old antagonist,
have " luces " in their coat of arms, and the Welsh parson
admirably misunderstands the word — " the dozen white louses
do become an old coat well." It can hardly be doubted that,
when this scene was written, Shakespeare had some grudge against
the Lucy family, and in making them ridiculous before the
Queen he may have had an amused sense that he was now
obtaining a success for his boyish lampoon little dreamed of
when it was originally put into circulation among the good folk
of Stratford.'

Robert Greene, in a pamphlet written upon his deathbed, and-
entitled Greene's Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of
Repentance, makes an insulting allusion to Shakespeare. Address-
ing three of his fellow-authors, he warns them against reposing
any trust in players. The passage in which the allusion occurs is
as follows : ' Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow,
beautified with our feathers, that with his tyger's heart wrapt in
a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a
blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute Johannes
factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.'
This was written in 1592, by which time Shakespeare had begun
to be recognised as a successful author and actor. Of the earlier
stages of his theatrical career little is definitely known. There
is a legend to the effect that he was at first reduced to the neces-
sity of holding horses at the doors of theatres, but this is not
worthy of serious consideration. A man of such capacity and
wit would be sure of a welcome and employment from the

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY in

managers of theatrical companies. Amongst his contempor-
aries were Richard Burbage, the greatest tragedian of the time ;
Ben Jonson, Marlowe, and Robert Greene. Greene was a
notable member of the company to which Shakespeare attached
himself, and has already been referred to as the author of jealous
and insulting words about the great dramatist. He was a
native of Stratford, and it is thought that he may have been
related to Shakespeare. As was common in those days, Shake-
speare combined the two characters of actor and manager. The
marvellous knowledge of stage-craft for which he was distin-
guished was doubtless gradually but rapidly acquired by him
in the earlier years of his professional career. During that time
he was engaged in the humble task of adapting old plays to the
exigencies of his theatre. He was connected with theatrical
life for twenty-five years in all (1586 to about 1611), a period
which embraced the ' splendour of his youth and the vigour
of his manhood.' His dramas, amounting to thirty-seven in
all, and his poems, with possibly the one exception of Venus
and Adonis, were written during this time. The date of com-
position of Venus and Adonis is uncertain.

Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's first poem. It is not
dramatic. It is dedicated to Lord Southampton, and is called
by the poet (on the dedication page) ' the first heir of my inven-
tion.' It was published in 1593. It is a voluptuous and startling
poem, but rich in description of ' country sights and sounds, of
the ways of animals and birds, such as he saw when wandering
in Charlcote Woods.'

It is impossible to ascertain with certainty the exact date of
the original production of some of the plays of Shakespeare, but
most historians have agreed upon a general scheme of classifica-
tion, which, in its main features at least, may be considered
trustworthy. The chronological method of arrangement is
obviously the best to adopt. It enables us to trace the gradual
and quick development of the poet's artistic and dramatic
genius. The evidence on which the chronological order is
based is very varied, but a sense of conviction is produced in
the mind of the student by the compatibility and concurrence
of the circumstances which are adduced as proofs. Of the
tables we have read, the following by Dr. Dowden is the most
concise :

112

A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

i. PRE-SHAKESPEARIAN GROUP.
(Touched by Shakespeare.)

Titus Andronicus (1588-1590).

1 Henry VI. (1590-1591).

2. EARLY COMEDIES.

Love's Labour's Lost (1590).

Comedy of Errors (1591).

Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592-

1593)-
Midsummer Night's Dream (1593-

1594).

3. MARLOWTJ-SHAKESPEARE GROUP.
Early History.

2 and 3 Henry VI. (1591-1502).
Richard III. (1593).

4. EARLY TRAGEDY.
Romeo and Juliet (? two dates,

1591, I596-I597)-

5. MIDDLE HISTORY.

Richard II. (1594).
King John (1595).

6. MIDDLE COMEDY.
Merchant of Venice (1596).

7. LATER HISTORY.
History and Comedy united.

i and 2 Henry IV. (1597-1598).
Henry V. (1599).

8. LATER COMEDY.

(a) Rough and Boisterous Comedy.
Taming of the Shrew (? 1597).
Merry Wives of Windsor (? 1598).

(b) Joyous, Refined, Romantic.

Much Ado about Nothing (1598).
As You Like It (1599).
Twelfth Night (1600-1601).

(c) Serious, Dark, Ironical.

All's Well that Ends Well (? 1601-

1602).

Measure for Measure (1603).
Troilus and Cressida (? 1603).

(Revised ? 1607.)

9. MIDDLE TRAGEDY.
Julius Caesar (1601).
Hamlet (1602).

10. LATER TRAGEDY.

Othello (1604).

Lear (1605).

Macbeth (1606).

Antony and Cleopatra (1607).

Coriolanus (1608).

Timon of Athens (1607-1608).

ii. ROMANCES.

Pericles (1608).
Cymbeline (1609).
The Tempest (1610).
Winter's Tale (1610-1611).

12. FRAGMENTS.

Two Noble Kinsmen (1612).
Henry VIII. (1612-1613).

POEMS.

Venus and Adonis (? 1592).
Lucrece (1593-1594).
Sonnets (? 1595-1605).

The most important facts about the quartos, the dates of the
first editions, etc., are contained in this table, also compiled by
Dr. Dowden :

1593. Venus and Adonis (before the end of 1630 eleven quarto editions had

appeared).

1594 (?). An edition of Titus Andronicus, not now extant.
Lucrece (before the end of 1624, six quartos).

1597. Romeo and Juliet (imperfect, pirated copy).

,, Richard II. (before the end of 1615, four quartos).
Richard III. (before the end of 1629, seven quartos).

1598. i Henry IV. (before the end of 1622, six quartos).

,, Love's Labour's Lost (with Shakespeare's name for the first time on a
play).

1599. Passionate Pilgrim (third edition in 1612, but only two now extant).
,, Romeo and Juliet (perfect, republished in 1609 ; and again, undated).

1600. 2 Henry IV.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 113

1600. Midsummer Night's Dream (two quartos in 1600, published (i) by

Fishers, (2) by Roberts).

„ Merchant of Venice (two quartos in 1600 ; (i) Roberts, (2) Heyes).
,, Much Ado about Nothing.
,, Titus Andronicus (again in 1611).

,, Henry V. (imperfect, pirated copy ; before end of 1608 three quartos
of imperfect Henry V.).

[Shakespeare's name on all those of 1600, except Titus Andronicus
and Henry V.~\

1602. Merry Wives of Windsor (imperfect report of early form of the play ;

second quarto, 1619, with Shakespeare's name).

1603. Hamlet (imperfect report of first form of the play ; with Shakespeare's

name).

1604. Hamlet (later form ; before the end of 1611 three quarto editions ;

with Shakespeare's name).

1608. Lear (two quartos in 1608, surreptitious (?); with Shakespeare's

name).

1609. Sonnets.

,, Troilus and Cressida (two quartos in 1609, with Shakespeare's name)
,, Pericles (before the end of 1630 five quartos ; with Shakespeare's

name).
1622. Othello (second quarto, with alterations and corrections, in 1630).

It is difficult even to attempt to analyze the many phases of
Shakespeare's poetical and dramatic genius and character. Never-
theless, he has been the subject of both praise and blame, cen-
sure and applause, drawn forth from varying tastes and different
ages. Rymer sees in Othello only ' a bloody farce,' or ' a tragedy
of a pocket-handkerchief.' Voltaire stigmatizes Hamlet as the
work of ' a drunken savage.' On the other hand, we find Dr.
Johnson eulogizing the following celebrated passage in which
Dryden gives vent to his estimate of the great poet :

' He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient
poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the
images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not
laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything you more
than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have
wanted learning give him the greater commendation ; he was
naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books to
read Nature ; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot
say he is everywhere alike ; yet were he so, I should do him
injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is
many times flat, insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into
clinches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always
great, when occasion is presented to him ; no man can say he
ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself
as high above the rest of poets —

'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'

U4 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Dr. Johnson writes thus of Shakespeare's powers : ' Shakespeare
is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet
of nature ; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror
of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the
customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world ;
by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate
but upon small numbers ; or by the accidents of transient
fashions or temporary opinions ; they are the genuine progeny
of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and
observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the
influence of those general passions and principles by which all
minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in
motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often
an individual ; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.'

Scarcely less eulogistic are the words of Hallam, in his intro-
duction to the Literature of Europe. He says : ' The name of
Shakespeare is the greatest in our literature ; it is the greatest in
all literature. No man ever came near him in the creative
powers of the mind; no man had ever such strength at once,
and such variety of imagination. The number of characters in
his plays is astonishingly great ; yet he never takes an abstract
quality to embody it, scarcely perhaps a definite condition of
manners, as Jonson does. Nor did he draw much from living
models ; there is no manifest appearance of personal caricature ,
in his comedies ; though in some slight traits of character this
may not improbabty have been the case. Compare him with
Homer, the tragedies of Greece, the poets of Italy, Plautus,
Cervantes, Moliere, Addison, Le Sage, Fielding, Richardson,
Scott, the romances of the elder or later schools ; one man has
far more than surpassed them all. Others may have been as
sublime ; others may have been more pathetic ; others may
have equalled him in grace and purity of language, and have
shunned some of his faults ; but the philosophy of Shakespeare,
his intimate searching out of the human heart, whether in the
gnomic form of sentence, or in the dramatic exhibition of char-
acter, is a gift peculiarly his own.'

It is customary to divide Shakespeare's" literary life into four
great periods. The beginning of the first period is uncertain to
a year or two, depending as it must upon the questionable date
of Venus and Adonis. But it may safely be put down as between

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 115

1591 and 1593. It lasted until 1596. The second period may
be reckoned from 1596 to 1601. During this stage in his career
the life of the poet underwent a change. He had prospered
financially, grown famous, and become a social favourite. He
could now count amongst his friends such powerful supporters
as William Herbert (Lord Pembroke), and the Earls of Essex
and Southampton. The tragic element now crept into his life,
when he saw Pembroke banished from the Court, Essex sent to
the scaffold, and Southampton to the Tower of London. Under
the influence and spell of these and more personal troubles he
turns from comedy to tragedy. His third period covers the
years from 1601 to 1608. Julius Ccesar, it is thought, may
have been in a measure inspired by the tragic fate of Essex.
Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear,
Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon
of Athens, all reflect the state of the poet's own mind during
this dark time. The fourth period embraces the years from
1608 to 1613. His mind becomes more peaceful, less resentful
of the calamities and ironies.of life, and during this time he gives
to the world The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline, and
Pericles. Henry VIII. he wrote in collaboration with Fletcher,
but whether he had much, or even anything, to do with the com-
position of Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen is said by critics like
Mr. Stopford Brooke to be somewhat doubtful.

Writing of King Lear in a recent able article in Harper's
Magazine, Mr. Swinburne says, somewhat characteristically :
' Among all its other great qualities, among all the many other
attributes which mark it for ever as matchless among the works
of man, it has this, above all, that it is the first great utterance
of a cry from the heights and the depths of the human spirit on
behalf of the outcasts of the world, on behalf of the social
sufferer, clean or unclean, innocent or criminal, thrall or free.
To satisfy the sense of righteousness, the craving for justice, as
unknown and unimaginable by Dante as by Chaucer, a change
must come upon the social scheme of things which shall make
an end of the actual relations between the judge and the cut-
purse, the beadle and the prostitute, the beggar and the King.
All this could be uttered, could be prophesied, could be thun-
dered from the English stage at the dawn of the seventeenth
century. Were it within the power of omnipotence to create

8—2

n6 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

a German or a Russian Shakespeare, could anything of the sort
be whispered or muttered, or hinted, or suggested from the
boards of a Russian or a German theatre at the dawn of the
twentieth ? When a Tolstoy or a Sudermann can do this, and
can do it with impunity in success, it will be allowed that his
country is not more than three centuries behind England in
civilization and in freedom.'

The Sonnets of Shakespeare number 154 in all. Some are
addressed to a youth of noble lineage, while others are intended
for a woman of stained character. They are in a great measure
expressions of the poet's own inner feelings, and are full of
sentiment. Sorrow, devotion, misplaced affection, tenderness,
grace, and moral reflection, all find a place in these beautiful
compositions. The student who would make a special study
of the Sonnets of Shakespeare could not do better than procure
Dr. Dowden's edition of them, in which he will find a careful
examination of the whole subject, and a resume of the many
theories connected with their origin and meaning.

William Shakespeare died on the 23rd of April, 1616. ' Shake-
speare, Dray ton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it
seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there con-
tracted.' So wrote the Vicar of Stratford fifty years after. But
this is not authenticated. The poet was buried in Stratford
Church. His grave is covered by a flat stone, on which is -
written an epitaph attributed to his own pen :

Good frend, for Jesus sake forbear

To digg the dust enclosed here

Blese be the man that spares these stones

And curst be he that moves my bones.

In an interesting article on ' Forged Literature ' contributed
to the Nineteenth Century, and quoted in our review of Chatter-
ton, Mr. Hewlett tells us of the extraordinary forgery of Shake-
spearian MSS., by which William Henry Ireland (whether as
principal or agent) succeeded in duping a distinguished circle of
scholars and men of letters in 1795-1796. The MSS. themselves,
not mere transcripts of them, were submitted to ocular inspec-
tion, and the success of the forgery was wonderful.

' Drs. Parr, Valpy, and Joseph Warton among scholars,
George Chalmers and John Pinkerton among antiquaries, Sir
Isaac Heard and Francis Townshend, professional heralds, and

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 117

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, James Boswell, and H. J. Pye (Poet
Laureate), representative men of letters, were eager to avow their
faith in the MSS. as indubitable autographs of Shakespeare, and
bearing the unmistakable stamp of his genius. Granting that
the antique aspect of sixteenth-century handwriting, parch-
ment, ink, and seals was so skilfully imitated as to deceive the
palaeographers who examined the MSS., it remains inexplicable
that a student so conversant with Elizabethan English as
Chalmers could have been blind to the grotesque exaggerations
of spelling which abound in every line of the text. Still more
amazing appears the blindness which led Sheridan to accept the
crude and tumid Vortigern as even a " youthful production " of
the author of Hamlet, and to give Ireland £300 for the privilege
of producing it at Drury Lane, besides half the profits of its
representation for sixty nights. How John Kemble, who was
forced to play the leading part, avenged the insult thus offered
to the genius whose fame was linked with his own, need not be
told afresh. In an Inquiry into the Authenticity of the MSS.
which Malone, the most competent Shakespearian critic of the
day, published soon after the collapse of Vortigcrn, he effectually
established their spurious character by a minute collation of
their language and spelling with those commonly employed in
Elizabethan literature. The laboured attempt of Chalmers to
adduce rebutting evidence was rendered futile by the prompt
appearance of a pamphlet in which the forger, a young law-
student, made an explicit confession of his fraud. Filial desire
to gratify the taste of his father, an enthusiastic Shakespeare-
worshipper, curiosity to see " how far credulity would go in
the search for antiquities," and vanity, intoxicated by the
success of his first deception, were the incentives which avowedly
actuated him. In another confession, made shortly before his
death in 1835, he recanted his former statement, and represented
his father as having been the chief concocter of the forgery.
Whoever was concerned in it evidently saw that the Shakespeare-
idolatry which then prevailed in antiquarian and literary circles
had reached the point of infatuation, and embraced the oppor-
tunity of turning it to profit.'

Dr. Johnson, in his preface to the works of Shakespeare, says :
' He that tries to recommend him by select quotations will
succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his

u8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.' We
feel that this is not only witty, but true. Yet we append some
specimens •

FROM 'MEASURE FOR MEASURE'

THE DUKE TO CLAUDIO

ACT III., SCENE i

Reason thus with life :
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep ; a breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences)
That do this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict ; merely, thou art death's fool ;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st tow'rd him still. Thou are not noble ;
For all th' accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nurs'd by baseness : thou'rt by no means valiant ;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st ; yet grossly fear'st
' Thy death, which is no more. Thou'rt not thyself ;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not ;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get ;
And what thou hast forget'st. Thou art not certain ;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor ;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloadeth thee.
*****

Thou hast nor youth, nor age ;
But as it were an after-dinner sleep,
Dreaming on both ; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld ; and when thou'rt old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths ; yet death we fear
That makes these odds all even.

FROM (THE MERCHANT OF VENICE'
MERCY.— PORTIA TO SHYLOCK.
ACT IV., SCENE i

The quality of Mercy is not strain'd ;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed ;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 119

His sceptre shews the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway ;

It is enthroned in the heart of kings ;

It is an attribute to God Himself ;

And earthly power doth then shew likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this —

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy ;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

FROM 'AS YOU LIKE IT'
THE EXILED DUKE'S PHILOSOPHY
ACT II., SCENE i

Now, my co-mates,1 and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp ? are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court ?

Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

The seasons' difference ; as the icy fang,

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,

' This is no flattery ; these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am.'

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous.

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.2

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

THE WORLD A STAGE
ACT II., SCENE 9

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players ;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first — the Infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then — the whining Schoolboy with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then — the Lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then — a Soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard ;

1 So Shakespeare coins co-mart, Hamlet, Act I., Scene i. — MALONE.

2 A belief of Shakespeare's age.

120 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel ;

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then — the Justice,

In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances ;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd Pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ;

His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

FROM ' MACBETH'

MACBETH'S MENTAL STRUGGLE

ACT I., SCENE 7

Macb. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly ; if th' assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With its surcease, success ;l that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, —
We'd jump the life to come. — But, in these cases.
We still have judgment here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th' inventor : this even-handed justice
Commends th' ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust ;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject ;
Strong both against the deed : then, as his host,
Who should against his murd'rer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd, against
The deep damnation of his taking off ;
And pity, like a naked, new-born babe.
Striding the blast, or heav'n's cherubim, hors'u
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in ev'ry eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. — I have no spui
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,

And falls on th' other

How now ? What news ?

Lady M. He has almost supp'd : why have you left the chamber ?

Macb. Hath he asked for me ?

Lady M. Know you not, he has ?

Macb. We will proceed no further in this business.

1 Johnson would read ' with its success, surcease,'

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 121

He hath honoured me of late ; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people.
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

Lady M. Was the hope drunk

Wherein you dressed yourself ? Hath it slept since ?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely ? From this time,
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour.
As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem ?
Letting / dare not wait upon / would,
Like the poor cat if th' adage.1

Macb. Pr'ythee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man ;
Who dares do more, is none.

FROM ' HAMLET'

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH

ACT III., SCENE i

To be, or not to be, that is the question : —

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ;

Or to take arms against a sea'2 of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them ? — To die ? — to sleep —

No more ; and, by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to ! — 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die — to sleep —

To sleep ! — perchance to dream ! — ay, there's the rub ;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes Calamity of so long life :

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes ;

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin ? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt3 and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death —

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn4

1 Fain would the cat fish eat
But she is loth to wet her feet.

2 Another reading is siege. Sea, however, although it causes a mixed
metaphor, is much more in accordance with Shakespeare's imagery.

3 Modern delicacy reads ' groan.' ' Grunt is undoubtedly the true
reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears.' — JOHNSON.

4 Boundary (Fr. borner) streams frequently act in this capacity. The
word burn, in Scotch, means a rivulet.

122

No traveller returns, — puzzles the will ;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of ?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

FROM MS YOU LIKE IT'
AMIEN'S SONG
ACT II., SCENE 7

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude ;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot :
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember'd not.

FROM 'A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

FEMALE FRIENDSHIP

ACT III., SCENE 2

Is all the counsel that we two have shared,

The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,

When we have chid the hasty -footed time

For parting us ; O ! and is all forgot —

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence ?

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our neelds1 created both one flower,

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,

Both warbling of one song, both in one key ;

As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds

Had been incorporate. So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition ;

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem :

So with two seeming bodies, but one heart.

A SONNET (CXLVI.)

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Press'd by2 those rebel powers that thee array.
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay ?

1 Needles.

- This is Dr. Dowden's reading. Steevens suggests Starved by. Malone
says it should be Fool'd by.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 123

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge ? Is this thy body's end ?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,

And let that pine to aggravate1 thy store.

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ;

Within be fed, — without be rich no more.

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men ;

And, death once dead, there's no more dying then.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

1516-1547

THE name of the Earl of Surrey, son of the third Duke of Norfolk,
occupies a conspicuous and honourable place amongst the English
poets of the sixteenth century. He was a soldier of great bravery,
a nobleman of many accomplishments, and ' a^rjoet whose com-
positions, though few in number, and limited in the subjects of
which they treat, exercised a marked influence on the intellectual
character of the j|gpJ His early history is involved in obscurity.
Dr. Nott, the best of his biographers, says he was educated at
Cambridge, and that he was afterwards elected High Steward
of that University. Another biographer, Wood, asserts that
he was for a time at Oxford. It seems certain, however, that
at the early age of sixteen he married Lady Frances Vere,
daughter of John, Earl of Oxford. In Southey's Select Works
of the English Poets 'we find interesting particulars about the
life and character of Surrey. It says :

' In the year of his marriage, he was one of the nobles who
accompanied Henry VIII. to his interview with the French King
at Boulogne ; and at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, he carried
the fourth sword, with the scabbard, upright, before the King,
as representative of his father-in-law, the Lord High Chamber-
lain. He lived in the closest intimacy with Henry's natural son,
the Duke of Richmond, who was at that time betrothed to his
only sister, the Lady Mary Howard, and some of his happiest
days were spent with this friend at Windsor. That was an age
in which a dear price was paid for pre-eminence in rank. Anne
Boleyn was his kinswoman and friend ; yet Surrey was com-
pelled to appear at her iniquitous trial, as representing his

1 Increase.

124 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

father in the character of Earl Marshal ; the Duke in his own
person presiding as Lord High Steward. He was one of the
chief mourners at the funeral of Queen Jane, and one of the
defendants in the jousts upon the marriage of Queen Anne of
Cleves. Soon afterwards he was made Knight of the Garter.
This was the season of his highest favour. It was followed by
disgrace and imprisonment for having challenged John a Leigh,
of Stockwell, upon a private quarrel. On his release he accom-
panied his father to the war in Scotland, and was present when
Kelsal was burnt. He had then to answer before the Privy
Council upon two charges : the one was for eating meat in Lent ;
the other for breaking windows in the streets of London with a
cross-bow at the dead of night. For the first he pleaded a
license, but confessed that he had made use of it too publicly ;
for the second he made the strange excuse, that being shocked
at the licentiousness of the citizens, he thought that by thus
alarming them he might put them in mind of the suddenness of
God's judgments, and so awaken them to repentance. Wyatt
was one of his companions in this freak of fanaticism, and they
were both committed to the Fleet for it.'

This young nobleman is said to have been fascinating and
accomplished, full of courage and spirit, ambitious of display,
and yet preferring, as has been said by another writer, ' the
nobilit}' of his nature to that of his fortune.' He is further
described as an enthusiastic friend, a knight after the model of
the knights of old, undaunted and incorruptible, first in the lists
and graceful in the dance ; a munificent patron of the fine arts
and of literature, and a liberal and beneficent helper of any
brother poet who appealed to him in distress. He was not
envious of greater fame in others, though he had a proud spirit
and a quick temper.

We next find him at the siege of Landrecy. Bonner had
invited Hadrian Junius to England, but when the distinguished
scholar arrived, Bonner was unable to assist him, and Surrey
took him into his household as physician, and ' gave him a
pension of fifty angels.' He gave further proof of his earnest-
ness as a patron of letters by receiving Churchyard, then a pro-
mising boy, into his service. He was Marshal of the army in
1544, conducted the siege of Montreuil, and had the command at
Guisnes and at Boulogne. Through the jealousy of Lord Hertford

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 125

he was removed from the ^last-mentioned charge in 1546, and,
on giving vent to his feelings in characteristically strong language,
he was imprisoned in Windsor Castle. In August of the same
year he was set free, but in the following December he was sent
to the Tower of London on a false charge of high treason, in
which his father, the Duke of Norfolk, was also involved. This
was in the days when, as Dr. Collier points out, ' Bluff King
Hal ' had become ' Bloated King Hal,' and all the courtly circle
saw that the huge heap of wickedness was sinking into the grave.

At that time there was a keen contest between the two great
houses of Howard and Seymour. The Howards were Roman
Catholics, and the Earl of Hertford, the head of the Seymours,
was in secret S37mpathy with the Reformers. Hertford's ambi-
tion was to secure the Protectorship of his nephew, Prince
Edward, on the death of the King. But the chief obstacles,
Norfolk and Surrey, must be removed. ' The thing was easy
to do ; the name of Howard was poison to the King, who had
already soiled their proud escutcheon with an ugly smear of
blood, drawn from the fair neck of his fifth wife.'

Surrey was tried at the Guildhall. It was laid to his charge
that he had quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor on his
shield with those of his own family. In vain did he point out
the fact that he had long worn these arms, even in the King's
own sight, and that it was his right to do so by reason of his
royal descent. He was condemned as a would-be usurper of
the throne, and about a week afterwards, on the igth of January,
1547, ' his bright hair, all dabbled in blood, swept the dust of
the scaffold.' The Duke, his father, was condemned to suffer a
like penalty on the 2Qth of the same month, but the death of
Henry, which occurred on the 28th, saved him from such an
ignominious end, and, after remaining in prison for some years,
he was restored to liberty. One of the most painful features of
Surrey's trial lay in the fact that his only sister, the widow of
his dearest friend, appeared voluntarily as a witness, to take
away the lives of her father and brother.

The name of Surrey is a notable one in the annals of English
verse, he being conspicuous for originality as well as for genius.
So far as can be ascertained with certainty, he was the earliest
writer of English blank verse, and also one of the first writers
of English sonnets^ He unquestionably did much to raise the

126 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

style and tone of poetry in his day. His works are not very
numerous, it is true. They consist of Songs and 'Sonnets, in a
collection published in London [by Tottel] in 1557 > the second and
fourth books of Virgil's Mneid, translated into blank verse, London,
1557 ; a translation of Ecclesiastes and some of the Psalms ; Satires
on the Citizens of London ; a translation from Boccaccio ; and
some smaller pieces. The entire works of Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey, and those of Sir Thomas Wyatt, were published, with
notes and memoirs, by Dr. Nott, 2 vols., 4to., 1816. The poem
which is generally considered his best was written during his
imprisonment at Windsor Castle. ' It consists of recollections of
his early youth ; it has all the graces of his early spirit, without
the pride. It combines the three best features of his character,
personal and poetical : his tender spirit of friendship, his taste
for knightly gallantry, and his powers of description.' Between
the death of Chaucer and the golden reign of Elizabeth there
was a dearth of poets who might be called great. Civil wars
and reverses of fortune had undermined society, and disturbed
the smooth current of affairs, and though Gower, Lydgate,
Skelton, and a few others followed Chaucer, yet for nearly a
century there was no very distinguished writer of English
poetry until, in 1557, the works of Wyatt and Surrey appeared.
Following the example of Chaucer, he drew much of his inspira-
tion from the Italian school, making an especial stud}' of.
Petrarch. *• i

' Surrey,' says Campbell, ' was not the inventor of our metrical
versification ; nor had his genius the potent voice and magic
spell which rouse all the dormant energies of a language. In
certain walks of composition, though not in the highest — viz.,
in the ode, elegy, and epitaph — he set a chaste and delicate
example ; but he was cut off too early in life, and cultivated
poetry too slightly, to carry the pure stream of his style into
the broad and bold channels of inventive fiction. Much, un-
doubtedly, he did, in giving sweetness to our numbers, and in
substituting for the rude tautology of a former age a style of
soft and brilliant ornament, of selected expression, and of verbal
arrangement, which often winds into graceful novelties, though
sometimes a little objectionable from its involution.'

There is one passage in the eventful and romantic history of
this meteoric poet which Dr. Collier paints for us with charac-

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 127

teristic delicacy of feeling. 'The poems of Petrarch/ he says,
' ring the changes in exquisite music on his love for Laura. So
the love-verses of Surrey are filled with the praises of the fair
Geraldine, whom Horace Walpole has tried to identify with
Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald, a daughter of the Earl of Kildare.
If this be so, Geraldine was only a girl of thirteen when the
poet, already married to Lady Frances Vere for six years, sang
of her beauty and her virtue. It is no unlikely thing that
Surrey, an instinctive lover of the beautiful, was smitten with
a deep admiration of the fresh, young, girlish face of one —

Standing with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet.

Such a feeling could exist — it often has existed — in the poet's
breast, free from all mingling of sin, and casting no shadow of
reproach upon a husband's loyalty.'

We append a specimen of Surrey's blank verse, from his
translation of the Second Book of the Mneid :

It was the time when, granted from the gods,

The first sleep creeps most sweet in weary folk

Lo, in my dream before mine eyes, methought

With rueful cheer I saw where Hector stood

(Out of whose eyes there gushed streams of tears),

Drawn at a car as he of late had been,

Distained with bloody dust, whose feet were bowl'n1

With the strait cords wherewith they haled him.

Ay me, what one ? That Hector how unlike

Which erst returned clad with Achilles' spoils,

Or when he threw into the Greekish ships

The Trojan flame ! — So was his beard defiled,

His crisped locks all clustered with his blood.

With all such wounds as many he received

About the walls of that his native town.

The following are two of Surrey's Sonnets :

IN PRAISE OF GERALDINE, DAUGHTER OF THE EARL
OF KILDARE

From Tuskane came my ladie's worthy race ;
Fair Florence was some tyme her auncient seate ;
The western yle,'2 whose pleasaunt shore doth face
Wild Camber's3 clifs, did give her lively heate ;
Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest ;
Her sire an Erie ; her dame of princes' blood.
From tender yeres in Britain she doth rest,
With Kinges child,4 where she tasteth costly food.

1 The participle of the Saxon verb to bolge, which gives the derivation
of bulge. — TYRWHITT'S Chaucer.

2 Ireland. '•' Cambria, Wales. 4 Princess Mary.

128 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Hondson did first present her to mine eyne ;
Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine ;
And Windsor, alas, doth chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind, her vertues from above —
Happy is he that can obtain her love.

SONNET ON SPRING

The sweet season that bud and bloom forth brings,

With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale ;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings ;

The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,

The hart hath hung his old head on the pale,
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings,

The fishes fleet with new-repaired scale •
The adder all her slough away she flings,

The swift swallow pursues the flies small,
The busy bee her honey now she wings,

Winter is worn that was the flower's bale.
And thus I see, among those pleasant things,
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

We close with two specimens of Surrey's lighter verse
THE MEANS TO ATTAIN A HAPPY LIFE

Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life, be these, I find :

The riches left, not got with pain ;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind,

The equal friend ; no grudge, no strife ;

No charge of rule, nor governance ;
Without disease, the healthful life ;

The household of continuance ;

The mean diet, no delicate fare ;

True wisdom joined with simpleness ;
The night discharged of all care ;

Where wine the 'wit may not oppress.

The faithful wife, without debate ;

Such sleeps as may beguile the night ;
Contented with thine own estate,

Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

BEAUTIES OF THE MORNING

The sun, when he hath spread his rays,
And shew'd his face ten thousand ways,
Ten thousand things do then begin
To shew the life that they are in.
The heaven shews lively art and hue,
Of sundry shapes and colours new,
And laughs upon the earth ; anon,
The earth as cold as any stone,
Wet in the tears of her own kind,
'Gins then to take a joyful mind.

GREATER POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 129

For well she feels that out and out,

The sun doth warm her round about,

And dries her children tenderly ;

And shews them forth full orderly :

The mountains high, and how they stand !

The valleys, and the great mainland !

The trees, the herbs, the towers strong,

The castles, and the rivers long.

The hunter then sounds out his horn,

And rangeth straight through wood and corn.

On hills then shew the ewe and lamb,

And every young one with his dam.

Then tune the birds their harmony ;

Then flock the fowl in company ;

Then everything doth pleasure find

In that, that comforts all their kind.

SIR THOMAS WYATT
1503-1542

THE name of Sir Thomas Wyatt is generally coupled in histories
of English literature with that of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,
their Songs and Sonnettes having been published in June, 1557,
in a collection which has since been called Tottel's Miscellany.
Wyatt was descended from an ancient and illustrious family.
He was born at Allington Castle, in Kent. After completing
his education at St. John's College, Cambridge, he obtained a
place at Court, where his noble person, his polished manners, his
commanding talents, and his feats in arms, soon raised him to a
conspicuous position', and obtained for him the favour of King
Henry VIII. His poetical powers early developed themselves
in sonnets and odes addressed to the Court beauties, especially
the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. He was married at a very early
age to a daughter of Lord Cobham, and, in 1537, was sent as
Ambassador to the Court of Spain. He is said to have been
greatly instrumental in furthering the Reformation by his
private influence on the mind of King Henry.

To Wyatt' s merits as a poet the highest praise that can be
given is that he was Surrey's coadjutor in reforming English
poetry. He is ^superior to his illustrious friend in masculine
jpower, but he^wants the graceful fancy, the easy flow, the
melancholy sweetness, and, above all, the exquisite good taste
which characterize ' Surrey's deathless lay.'

Of the collection of poems above mentioned, forty are attri-

130 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

buted to Wyatt and ninety-six to Surrey. It is part of Wyatt's
glory to have introduced the sonnet into the English language.
Some historians give the credit to Surrey, but the confusion of
thought is as easily excused as accounted for. Mr. Chambers, in
his latest edition of the Cyclopedia of English Literature, gives the
best account yet published of the distinction between the rela-
tive works of these two poets. Speaking of Wyatt's introduc-
tion of the sonnet into our language, he says : ' It is not by his
ten imitations of Petrarch, or his own essays on the same lines,
that his contribution to our literature may most fairly be judged.
Hi srejiHrm ovation wa<^ the, revival of that lyrical mood which
had produced some charming snatches of English verse in the
thirteenth century, and had then died away, even Chaucer

having but a faint touch Of it. Tn^Wyatt jt ic prprtnminaqj;/

Again, he says : ' In turning from Wyatt to Surrey, it is usual
to contrast the smoothness and finish of the younger with the
crabbedness of the elder. If we look only to their sonnets, the
contrast is obvious enough, for Surrey had the wit to invent
that spurious but effective form of three quatrains and a couplet
— a metre in which smoothness is lightly attained — and easily
surpasses Wyatt in these poems.' The form invented by Surrey
is that which was subsequently adopted by Shakespeare, and
by many other sonneteers who have fought shy of the greater
difficulties imposed by the restrictions of the pure Italian form of,
the sonnet proper, as cultivated by Petrarca and his imitators.

FROM ONE OF WYATT'S LYRICS

Forget not yet the tried intent
Of such a truth as I have meant :
My great travail so gladly spent,

Forget not yet !
Forget not yet when first began
The weary life ye know, since whan
The suit, the service non tell can

Forget not yet !
Forget not yet the great assays,
The cruel wrong, the scornful ways,
The painful patience in delays,

Forget not yet !
Forget not, oh forget not this,
How long ago hath been, and is
The mind that never meant amiss.

Forget not yet !

Forget not yet thine own approv'd,
The which so long hath thee so lov'd,
"Whose steadfast faith hath never mov'd

Forget not this !

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 131

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS

Stephen Hawes (flourished in 1506) is spoken of by Warton as
' the only writer deserving the name of a poet in the reign of
Henry VII.' He was, the author of The Pastime of Pleasure, or
the Historic of Grande Amour and La Bel Pucel, which was dedi-
cated to the King. It was written in 1506, but was not published
until 1517, when it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, the suc-
cessor of Caxton. It reached a second edition in 1554, and a
third in 1555. The poem is a long one, and ' in many passages
a striking allegorical poem in the versification of old Lydgate.'
It possesses many passages which display considerable power.
The following verses are from a striking description of the
Temple of Mars :

Beside this tower of old foundation
There was a temple strongly edified,
To the high honour and reputation
Of the mighty Mars it was so fortified ;
And for to know what it signified
I entered in, and saw of gold so pure
Of worthy Mars the marvellous picture.

***** • i

O prince of honour and of worthy fame !
O noble knights of old antiquity ! *

O redoubted courage, the causer of their name,
Whose worthy acts Fame caused to be
In books written, as ye well may see —
So give me grace right well to recure
The power of fame that shall so long endure.

Alexander Barklay (died in 1552) was the author of the Ship
of Fools, a translation from the German of Brandt. It was
printed in 1509. It is a satire. Brandt was a learned civilian
of Basel, who published a satire in German bearing the same
title in the year 1494. Barclay (or Barklay) is accounted an
improver of the English language, though it must be confessed
that his fools and their folly are a little monotonous and weari-
some. A beautiful edition of this work was edited in 1874 by
the late Thomas H. Jamieson, of the Advocates' Library, illus-
trated with facsimiles of the original woodcuts. It is the opinion

9—2

132 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

of that gentleman that the poet was born ' beyond the cold river
of Tweed/ which would imply that he was a Scottish poet. He
further fixes the date of Barklay's birth as in or about the year
1476, but there is an element of uncertainty about all this.
There is good reason for believing, however, that he was a student
at the University of Cambridge, and, taking Holy Orders, be-
came Chaplain of St. Mary Ottery, in Devonshire, having travelled
abroad for some time. He also published five Eclogues, three
of which are paraphrases from Pope Pius II. (^Eneas Sylvius),
who died in 1464. Two others are imitations of Jo Baptist
Mantuan. Barclay was the author of a number of proverbial
sayings which are still in common use — for example :

When the stede is stolyn to shyt the stable dore.

A crowe to pull.

They robbe St. Peter therwith to clothe St. Powle.

For children brent still after drede the fire.

Better is a frende in courte than a peny in purse.

Barclay died at Croydon, at an advanced age. He speaks of
that place as one which was familiar to him in early days :
While I in youth in Croiden towne did dwell.

Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) was one of the most learned and
accomplished women of the age to which she has bequeathed her
name. When the pupil of Roger Ascham, she ' could speak
Latin easily, Greek moderately well, and French and Italian as'
perfectly as English.' She translated Boethius and Sallust. Her
poetry was rather extravagantly praised in her own time, but
even in the light of more sober judgment and maturer criticism
they are readable enough, and bear comparison with the works
of many of our respectable minor poets. When, during the
reign of Mary, she was imprisoned in the gatehouse at Wood-
stock, she wrote the following lines on the shutter with a piece
of charcoal :

Oh, Fortune, how thy restless wavering state
Hath wrought with care my troubled wit,
Witness the present prison whither fate

Could bear me and the joys I quit.
Thou caus'dst the guilty to be loosed
From bonds wherein an innocent enclosed,
Causing the guiltless to be strait reserved
And freeing those that death hath well deserved.
But by her envy can be nothing wrought.
So God send to my foes all they have wrought.'

Quoth Elizabeth, Prisoner.

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 133

Mr. Chambers, in the most recent edition of his Cyclopcedia
of English Literature, says : ' Bishop Creighton accepts as
probably genuine the famous impromptu made when her sister,
the Queen, caused her to be plied with questions about her belief
in Transubstantiation :

' He was the Word that spake it ;
He took the bread, and brake it ;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it. '

But the passage, if the best authorities until now have not
been greatly mistaken, was a quotation from the Divine Poems
of Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's.

It may be fairly said that the Princess Elizabeth was pre-
cocious, and displayed her literary leanings at a tender age.
We are indebted to the Royal Society of Literature for a repro-
duction in facsimile of The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, a prose
translation of a poem written in French by Queen Margaret of
Navarre, made in 1544 by the Princess (afterwards Queen) Eliza-
beth, then eleven years of age. It is quite evident that the manu-
script was written by the Princess's own hand, not merely from
what she says in the dedication, but from a comparison with
other specimens of her writing at the same age to be seen in the
British Museum.

The Queen's best-known poem is a ' ditty of her Majesty's
own making, passing sweet and harmonical,' which is found in
Puttenham's Art of 'English Poesy (1589). It has been wrongly
called a sonnet, but the fallacy of that is obvious :

VERSES BY QUEEN ELIZABETH

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,

And wit me warnes to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy.

For falsehood now doth flow, and subject faith doth ebb,

Which would not be, if reason rul'd or wisdome wev'd the webbe.

But clowdes of tois untried do cloake aspiring mindes,

Which turn to raigne of late repent, by course of changed windes.

The toppe of hope supposed, the roote of ruth will be,

And fruitless all their grafted guiles, as shortly ye shall see.

Then dazeld eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,

Shall be unseeld by worthy wights, whose foresight falsehood finds,

The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sowe,

Shall reap no gaine where former rule hath taught stil peace to growe.

No forreine bannisht wight shall ancre in this port,

Our realme it brookes no strangers force, let them elsewhere resort.

Our rusty sworde with rest shall first his edge employ

To polle their toppes that seeke such change and gape for future joy.

134 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Of this poem Puttenham says that it refers to the Queen's
alarm at the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots — ' The Daughter
of Debate.' It is thought it must have been written after the
execution of Norfolk.

(1562-1619) was a prolific writer. His chief
work is a History of the Civil Wars, a poem on the Wars of the
Roses. It is in eight parts, or books, and was published in 1604.
Another work of considerable merit is entitled Musophilus,
containing a General Defence of Learning. He also wrote dramas,
masques, Sonnets, and Epistles. His Epistle to the Countess of
Cumberland is a poem of much merit. Coleridge, writing to
Charles Lamb, says of him that he was ' gravely sober on all
ordinary affairs, and not easily excited by any, yet there is one
on which his blood boils — whenever he speaks of English valour
exerted against a foreign enemy.'

Daniel was the son of a music-master, and was born near Taun-
ton. He entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, but left without taking
a degree. He was Master of the Queen's Revels in the reign of
James I., and was a friend of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Chapman.

Michael Drayton (1563-1631), a voluminous writer, was born,
it is thought, at Atherstone, in Warwickshire, but his early
history is involved in doubt. He published a collection of
Pastorals in 1593, and in 1598 appeared The Barons' Wars and,
England's Heroical Epistles. In the former he gives a descrip-
tion of the chief incidents of the unfortunate reign of Edward II.,
and in the latter ' a kind of adaptation of the plan of Ovid to
English annals.' In 1612 he published the first part of Poly-
olbion, the second part appearing in 1622. It is an elaborate
work, ' entirely unlike any other in English poetry, both in its
subject and in the manner of its composition.' It is a minute
and accurate itinerary of the whole of England and Wales,
written in long rhymed verse, each line containing twelve
syllables. Copious notes are added to the work, partly by
Selden. In 1627 he published The Battle of Agincourt, The
Court of Faerie, and other poems, and The Muses' Elysium in
1630. There are many gems of poesy in these various publica-
tions. Drayton was buried in Westminster Abbey, and a monu-
ment erected to his memory by Anne Clifford, Countess of
Pembroke and Montgomery.

- MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 135

Sir John Davies (1570-1626) was an English barrister, who
was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and Speaker of the Irish
House of Commons. He was the author of two remarkable
poems, ' on subjects so widely different that their juxtaposition
excites almost a feeling of ludicrous paradox.' One is a lengthy
philosophical treatise on The Soul of Man and the Immortality
thereof, one of the first poems of the kind in the language. It
was published in 1599, and is written in four-lined stanzas of
heroic lines. The other poem is entitled Orchestra, or a Poem
of Dancing, in a Dialogue between Penelope and one of her Wooers.
It is written in a stanza of seven lines, peculiarly constructed.
The poet represents the heroine as refusing to dance with her
lover, who thereupon delivers a lecture on the antiquity of the
art of dancing, ' in verses partaking of the flexibility and grace
of the subject.' One verse will amply suffice as an example of
the graceful style of the poet :

And thou, sweet Music, dancing's only life,
The ear's sole happiness, the air's best speech,

Loadstone of fellowship, charming rod of strife,
The soft mind's paradise, the sick mind's leech,

With thine own tongue thou trees and stones canst teach,
That when the air doth dance her finest measure,
Then art thou born, the gods' and men's sweet pleasure.

Thomas Ttisser (i5i5?-i58p) was a native of Rivenhall, in
Essex. He was educated at Cambridge, and was attached to
the Court for two years. He subsequently retired to the country,
and took a farm in Sussex. His patron at Court was William,
Lord Paget. Having tired of farming, he joined the choir of
Norwich Cathedral, was, it is said, for a time a fiddler, and died
in poverty in London in 1580. He is celebrated as being the
author of the first didactic poem in the English language. His
work, published in 1557, is entitled A Hondreth Good Points of
Husbandrie. It went through several editions, and was pub-
lished in an improved and enlarged form in 1577, under the title
of Five Hondreth Points of Good Husbandrie, united- to as many
of Good Wiferie.

Thomas, Lord Vaux, was born about the year 1510. He held
the office of Captain of the Isle of Jersey in the reign of Henry VIII.
His poems were published in Tottel's Miscellany. There are
also thirteen poems by this author in another collection called
The Paradise of Dainty Devices, the date of which is 1576. He

136 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

is described by Puttenham in his ' Art of Poesie ' as ' a man of
much facility in vulgar makings.' He died in the reign of Queen
Mary.

Nicholas Grimoald (1520-1563) was a Professor of Rhetoric in
the University of Oxford. Under the initials ' N. G.' he con-
tributed poems to Tottel's Miscellany. A very learned man, he
translated some of the Greek and Latin classics into English.
He was born about the year 1520, and died in 1563. Besides a
number of smaller poems, he wrote, in blank verse, two transla-
tions from the Latin of Philip Gaultier and Beza.

Thomas Sackmlle^ Lord Buckhurst (1527-1608). — This poet, who
was born in the year 1527, was ' the herald of that splendour in
which Elizabeth's glorious reign was destined to close.' He was
a Master of Arts of the University of Cambridge, and studied law
at the Inner Temple. On two occasions he went abroad in the
capacity of Ambassador, and later in life he held the important
office of High Steward. He was commissioned to break the
sad news of her fate to Mary Queen of Scots. His play called
Gorboduc, written in collaboration with Thomas Norton, was
the first English tragedy. He also commemorated in majestic
verse the greatness and ultimate downfall of the Duke of Buck-
ingham. He is said to have designed a great poem called_77tg.
Mirrour_ior Magistrates towards the end of the reign of Queen
Mary. The first edition of this work was published in 1559, the.
authors being Richard Baldwin and George Ferrers. In a
second edition, which was published in 1563, was an Induction,
or Introduction, by Sackville, which bears comparison with some
of the work of Chaucer.

John Harrington (1534-1582) wrote ' some pleasing amatory
verses,' which were published in the Nugfe Antique. He was
imprisoned in the Tower of London by Queen Mary for holding
correspondence with Queen Elizabeth.

Arthur Brooke was the author of The Tragical History of
Romeo and Juliet, a loose translation from the Italian of Ban-
dello. It was from this poem that Shakespeare obtained the
plot of his play. Brooke was lost in a ship which perished off
Newhaven about the year 1563.

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 137

George Gascoigne has been classed as ranking next to Lord
buckhurst amongst poets of the earlier years of the reign of
Elizabeth. Three of his works are to be found in Arber's Re-
prints (1868). These are Certayne Notes of Instruction in
English Verse, 1575 ; The Steele Glass, 1576 ; and The Com-
playnt of Philomene, 1576. Of these, The Steele Glass is the first
example of English satire in blank verse. Gascoigne's dates are,
as nearly as can be estimated, from 1535 to 1577.

Sir Philip Sidney f 1^4-1 ^86^ cannot be accounted a notable
poet. It has been said of him that he was almost the beau ideal
of the courtier, the soldier, and the scholar. He was chiefly
celebrated as a writer of prose, but his Sonnets are ' remarkable n
for their somewhat languid and refined elegance/ He also
wrote a small tract called A Defence of Poesy. Of his poetical
talent it has been remarked that ' if he had looked into his own
noble heart, and written directly from that, instead of from his
somewhat too metaphysico-philosophical head, his poetry would
have been excellent.'

Robert Southwell (1560-1595) was a Roman Catholic, who
became a Jesuit in 1576, at the age of sixteen. He was born
at St. Faith's, Norfolk, in 1560. Educated in Flanders and
Rome, he came back to England as a missionary, but was
committed to the Tower of London in 1592, and executed at
Tyburn in 1595, for high treason. In prison he wrote St. Peter's
Complaint and Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears, which ran
through eleven editions. His shorter poems are accounted the
best. All his poems are remarkable for the piety of their tone
and the patient spirit of resignation which pervades them.

William Warner (1558-1609) was a native of Oxfordshire and
an attorney attached to the Court of Common Pleas. He wrote
a history in rhyme, entitled Albion's England. Though it is said
to have rivalled the Mirror for Magistrates in its own day, it is
now only to be accounted monotonous and uninteresting. It
is written in fourteen-syllable verse, and is a history of England
from the Deluge to the reign of James I. Hs died suddenly
at Amwell, in Hertfordshire, in March, 1609.

Sir John Harrington (1561-1612) is celebrated as the first
writer to translate Ariosto into English. He was the son of the
John Harrington already mentioned in this history.

138 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford (circa 1540-1604), was a con-
tributor to the miscellany known as The Paradise of Dainty
Devices. It is said of this poet that ' he was the first that
brought from Italy embroidered gloves and perfumes, which
Elizabeth no doubt approved of as highly as his sonnets or
madrigals.'

Sir Edward Dyer (circa 1540-1607) was the author of a popular
poem entitled My Mind to Me a Kingdom is and other verses.

Thomas Storer was born in London, but the exact date of his
birth is not known. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1587,
and took the degree of Master of Arts in 1594. He was a con-
tributor of pastoral airs and madrigals to England's Helicon.
His Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey is said to have influ-
enced Shakespeare in the design and composition of his play
King Henry VIII. He died in 1604.

William Hunnis is to be remembered as a contributor to the
Paradise of Dainty Devices. Mr. Shaw places him third in order
of merit amongst the contributors, ranking after Richard Edwards
and Lord Vaux. Hunnis was one of the gentlemen of Queen
Elizabeth's chapel ; he also wrote some moral and religious
poems printed separately. He died in 1568.

Thomas Churchyard (1520-1604) was a soldier who served,
under three Sovereigns — Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth. He
wrote about seventy volumes of prose and poetry. He is thought
to have been the Palamon of Spenser's Colin Clout
That sang so long until quite hoarse he grew.

Churchyard had a chequered career, and was rewarded for his
military service by a pension of eighteenpence a day, ' not paid
regularly,' from Queen Elizabeth, to whom he had dedicated
some of his poems. Disraeli says of him that he was ' one of
those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days,
and lived a long life to complete the misfortune.'

George Turberville (circa 1530-1594) was a writer of songs and
sonnets. He was Secretary to Randolph, Ambassador at the
Court of Russia in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. ' He very fre-
quently employed a peculiar modification of the old English
ballad stanza, which was extremely fashionable at this period.

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 139

The modification consists in the third line, instead of being of
equal length to the first, containing eight.' His poems consist
chiefly of love epistles, epitaphs, and complimentary verses.

Henry Constable (circa 1560-1612) published a large number
of sonnets under the assumed name of Diana. He is supposed
by historians to have been the same Henry Constable who was
banished from his country for his advocacy of the tenets of the
Roman Catholic Church.

Thomas Watson (circa 1557-1592) was the author of a number
of Sonnets, published under the general title of Hecatompathia,
or Passionate Century of Love. These sonnets are of superior
merit, and were greatly admired.

Nicholas Breton (1558-1624) is said to have been the son of
Captain Nicholas Breton, of Tarn worth. He was a contributor
of poetical pieces to England's Helicon, a poetical miscellany
published in 1600. Very little is known of his personal history.
He published Works of a Young Wit in 1577. The following
lines are from A Pastoral :

On a hill there grows a flower,

Fair befall the dainty sweet !
By that flower there is a bower

Where the heavenly Muses meet.

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was, according to Mr. Shaw,
' by far the most powerful genius among the dramatic poets
who immediately preceded Shakespeare.' He was born at
Canterbury in 1563, and received his education at the University
of Cambridge. He contributed a poem entitled The Passionate
Shepherd to his Love to England's Helicon. He lived a life of
debauchery, and was an atheist, but there is much tenderness
and beauty in his poems. The following verses are from The
Passionate Shepherd :

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, and hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) is said by Izaak Walton,
amongst others, to have written The Nymph's Reply to the

140 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

above-mentioned poem, and sent it to the same miscellany- It
is quite equal in merit to the work of Marlowe. We append

two verses :

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

But Time drives flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and flocks grow cold ;
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complain of cares to come.

Raleigh's literary fame does not rest upon his poetical talent
only. He is more justly celebrated for his History of the World
traced down to the second Macedonian War. His fame as a
courtier and soldier are too well known to need any special
mention here.

T/iigfflKfO • Z.prfcr (circa 1555-1625) was a dramatic poet. He
contributed ten poems to England's Helicon. He has been
described as ' second to Kj^d in vigour and boldness of concep-
tion ; but as a drawer of character, so essential a part of dra-
matic poetry, he unquestionably has the advantage.' He was
educated at Trinity College, Oxford, which he entered as a
servitor in 1573. He was for a while an actor, but subsequently
became a student of law, which he abandoned in turn for the
profession of medicine. Besides two dramas, Lodge wrote
pastoral tales, sonnets, and satires. His poetry is tuneful and
rhythmical, but rather too ornate. Shakespeare is said to have
been indebted for many of the incidents in As You Like It to
Lodge's Rosalynde : Euphues' Golden Legacie, a sentimental work
of very considerable power, written in prose.

Richard Barnfield (circa 1570-1598) was, like Lodge, a graduate
of Oxford. He published a number of poems, including a col-
lection called Cynthia, with Certain Sonnets, which appeared in
1595, The Legend of Cassandra (1595), the Affectionate Shepherd
(1596), and The Encomium of Lady Pecunia (1598). Barnfield
is perhaps chiefly noted for the peculiar circumstance that some
of his poems were for a while, through a trick of the publisher,
attributed to Shakespeare. They appeared in a volume called
' The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shakespeare.' In this volume
are two sonnets by Shakespeare, some verses from Love's
Labour's Lost, and some pieces from Barnfield's Lady Pecunia.

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 141

One of the poems thus attributed to the Bard of Avon was re-
printed in England's Helicon under the signature of Ignoto in
1600. The versification is tuneful, as will be seen from the
following extract :

As it fell upon a day,

In the merry month of May,

Sitting in a pleasant shade,

Which a grove of myrtles made ;

Beasts did leap, and birds did sing ;

Trees did grow, and plants did spring ;

Everything did banish moan,

Save the nightingale alone ;

She, poor bird, as all forlorn,

Leaned her breast up-till a thorn,

And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,

That to hear it was great pity.

' Fie, fie, fie,' now she would cry ;

' Teru, teru,' by-and-by ;

That, to hear her so complain,

Scarce I could from tears refrain ;

For her griefs, so lively shown,

Made me think upon mine own.

Ah ! — thought I — thou mourn'st in vain ;

None takes pity on thy pain :

Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee ;

Ruthless bears, they will not cheer thee.

King Pandion, he is dead ;

All thy friends are lapped in lead ;

All thy fellow-birds do sing,

Careless of thy sorrowing !

Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618) was a merchant, and the author
of a number of poetical works of considerable merit which, how-
ever, have not lived. ' He is best known to fame as having trans-
lated the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, a French poet.
This work went through seven editions, and was highly spoken
of by Izaak Walton and Milton, the latter of whom went so far
as to copy some portions of it. This poet was known in his day
as ' Silver-tongued Sylvester.'

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628) was a poet of consider-
able power. He lived in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and
Charles I. He held some high offices of state, and was raised to
the peerage by King James in 1620. He was murdered by an
old servant whom he had not mentioned in his will, and who
had become aware of the omission. The servant, seized with
remorse, then killed himself. Greville was a friend of Sir Philip
Sidney, a fact which is mentioned on his tomb at Warwick. He

142 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

wrote no Sonnets, besides a number of other poems. His works
were edited in 1871 by the Rev. A. B. Grosart.

Southey says that Dryden appears to him to have formed his
tragic style more upon that of Brooke than upon any other
author.

John Heywood was a Roman Catholic, and seems to have per-
formed the office of a Court jester for King Henry VIII. He was
a dramatist of some power, and the author of several Interludes,
' a class of compositions in dialogues . . . merry and farcical in
subject, which were exceedingly fashionable about the time
when the great controversy was raging between the (Roman)
Catholic Church and the Reformed religion in England.' He was
also the author of an allegorical poem entitled The Spider and
the Fly. The Roman Church was typified by the fly, and the
Reformed Church by the spider. At the death of Queen Mary in
155$, Heywood, fearing persecution, fled to Mechlin in Brabant,
where he died in 1565.

The Rev. Nicholas Udall (1504-1556) was the author of the
earliest comedy in the English language. It was entitled Ralph
Roister Doister, and was written in 1553, before the close of the
reign of Edward VI. The language is in long and irregularly-
measured rhyme. He was a native of the county of Hants,
head-master of Eton for some years, and subsequently of West-
minster Grammar School.

Thomas Norton (1532-1584) is celebrated as having written, in
conjunction with Lord Buckhurst, the earliest known specimen
of English tragedy. The work is called Gorboduc, or Ferrex and
Porrex, and was performed before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall
by some barristers of the Inner Temple. According to Mr.
Collier, Norton wrote the first three acts and Buckhurst the last
two. The tragedy is written in blank verse, and ' observes
some of the more useful rules of the classic drama of antiquity,
to which it bears resemblance in the introduction of a chorus.'
The following lines occur in it :

Acastus. Your grace should now, in these grave years of yours,
Have found ere this the price of mortal joys ;
How short they be, how fading here in earth ;
How full of change, how little our estate,
Of nothing sure, save only of the death,
To whom both man and all the world doth owe

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 143

Their end at last : neither should nature's power
In other sort against your heart prevail,
Then as the naked hand whose stroke assays
The armed beast where force doth light in vain.

Gorboduc. Many can yield right sage and grave advice
Of patient sprite to others wrapped in woe,
And can in speech both rule and conquer kind,
Who, if by proof they might feel nature's force,
Would shew themselves men as they are indeed,
Which now will needs be gods.

George Whetstone (temp. Elizabeth) was the author of Promos
and Cassandra (published 1578), on which Shakespeare founded
his Measure for Measure. It was a translation of one of the
Hundred Tales of Giraldo Cinthio, an Italian novelist. It con-
tains a number of poetical pieces.

George Peele (circa 1558-1598) was educated at Christ Church,
Oxford. He was ' City Poet and Conductor of Pageants for the
Court.' His greatest work is entitled The Love of King David
and Fair Bathshebe, a Scripture drama. He also wrote a drama
called Absalom, which is described by Campbell as ' the earliest
fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our
dramatic poetry.' Mr. Chambers says : ' It is not probable
that Peele's play was written before 1590, as one passage in
it seems a direct plagiarism from the Faerie Queen of Spenser.'

Thomas Kyd (temp. Elizabeth) was a dramatic poet of whose
personal history very little is known. He is chiefly remarkable
as being the author of a play called Hieronimo, or Jeronimo.
A number of other dramatists recast it, a fact which has led to
its being associated with the names of almost all the elder
Elizabethan dramatists. A second part was published by Kyd
in 1601, under the title of The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo
is Mad Again.

Thomas Nash (circa 1564-1600) was a dramatic poet, ' a lively
satirist who amused the town with his attacks on Gabriel Harvey
and the Puritans.' He was a man of rare gifts, though his
works, which were numerous, are now but little known, except
to the antiquarian. His comedy in verse, entitled Summer's
Last Will and Testament, was performed in the presence of Queen
Elizabeth in 1592. He was imprisoned on account of his satirical
comedy The Isle of Dogs, which drew upon him the displeasure
of the Court and the Government, though the play was never

144 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

printed. He was educated at the University of Cambridge,
graduating at St. John's College. He was ' the Churchill of his
day/ and says himself that his life was ' spent in fantastical
satirism, in whose veins heretofore I misspent my spirit, and
prodigally conspired against good hours.' He was born at
Lowestoft.

Robert Greene (circa 1560-1592) was born at Norwich it is
thought, in the year 1560, or thereabouts. A very black account
of his history is given by Gabriel Harvey, and the details of it
are corroborated by Greene himself in his Repentance of Robert
Greene, which appeared in 1592. Like Nash, he graduated at
St. John's College, Cambridge, but proceeded M.A. at Clare Hall.
He is chiefly remarkable for his Groatsworth of Wit, in which he
makes the well-known punning allusion to Shakespeare which
we deal with in our sketch of the great dramatist. His death
resulted from a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine.
Gabriel Harvey tells us that the corpse was decked by the wife
of a cordwainer with ' a garland of bays, pursuant to his last
request.' The following lines from Sephestia's Song to Her Child

are pretty :

Mother's wag, pretty boy,

Father's sorrow, father's joy,

When thy father first did see

Such a boy by him and me,

He was glad, I was woe,

Fortune changed, made him so ;

When he had left his pretty boy,

Last his sorrow, first his joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee ;
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.

Anthony Munday (1554-1633), according to the inscription on
his tomb in St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, was a citizen and .
draper of London. Francis Meres calls him ' the best plotter
among the comic poets.' The dates of his fourteen plays range
from 1580 to 1621. The first of any importance was Valentine
and Orson, which appeared in 1598. One of his dramas, entitled
Sir John Oldcastle, was written with the assistance of Michael
Drayton and others. It was published, with the name of
Shakespeare on its title-page, in 1600.

Henry Chettle (died in 1603) is said to have written thirty-
eight plays, either wholly or in part. Only four of these were '
published, and of these only three have been preserved. All

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 145

his plays were written between the years 1597 and 1603. Shake-
speare's Henry VIII. was very probably suggested by Chettle's
Cardinal Wolsey as portrayed in one of his plays. A comedy
entitled Patient Grisell is considered the best of Chettle's works.
The following lines give a good example of the poet's style :

Methinks her beauty, shining through those weeds,

Seems like a bright star in the sullen night.

How lovely poverty dwells on her back !

Did but the proud world note her as I do,

She would cast off rich robes, forswear rich stat' ,

To clothe her in such poor habiliments.

George Chapman (1557-1634) was remarkable for ' the power
with which he communicated the rich colouring of romantic
poetry to the forms borrowed by his learning from Greek legend
and history.' A dramatic poet of some force, he was yet more
distinguished for his translation of Homer. Lamb says of him
that ' he would have made a great epic poet if, indeed, he has
not abundantly shown himself to be one ; for his Homer is not
so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses
rewritten.' The beauty of this author's compound Homeric
epithets, as far-shooting Phoebus, the silver-footed Thetis, and the
triple-feathered helm, have b'een cited by critics as evincing a
chaste and luxuriant imagination.

Thomas Middleton (died in 1627) wrote about twenty plays,
but his memory is now only kept alive by reason of ' a conjec-
ture that an old neglected drama by him supplied the witchcraft
scenery and part of 'the lyrical incantations of Macbeth.' Mr.
Chambers leans rather to the idea that it was Middleton who
borrowed from Shakespeare, as Macbeth was written in the
fulness of Shakespeare's fame and genius. He may have seen
the play performed, or The Witch, in which the resemblance to
it is found, may not have been written until 1623, when the
celebrated First Folio appeared. On Shrove Tuesday, 1617,
some apprentices, in a town riot, destroyed the Cockpit Theatre.
In describing the circumstances an old ballad says :

Books old and young on heap they flung,

And burned them in the blazes —
Tom Dekker, Heywood, Middleton,

And other wandering crazys.

Richard Edwards (circa 1523-1566) was the best writer amongst
those who contributed verse to the Paradise of Dainty Devices.

10

146 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

A poem by him, entitled Amantium Irce, was accounted one of
the best of the miscellaneous poems of the time in which he
lived. It is said that he was not only the chief contributor, but
also the framer of the Paradise, which was not published until
ten years after his death, which occurred in 1566. This collec-
tion of miscellaneous poems was a kind of imitation of Tottel's
Miscellany, which was a very successful venture. Sir Egerton
Brydges has republished it in the British Biographer. ' The
poems,' he says, ' do not, it must be admitted, belong to the
higher classes ; they are of moral and didactic kind. In their
subject there is too little variety, as they deal very generally in
the commonplaces of ethics, such as the ficklenesses and caprices
of love, the falsehood and instability of friendship, and the
vanity of all human pleasures. But many of these are often
expressed with a vigour which would do credit to any era.'

Francis Damson (1575-1618) was the editor of the Poetical
Rhapsody, a collection of the ' fugitive ' poetry of the age,
similar to Tottel's, and England's Helicon. Davison was himself
a poet of no mean power, as is shown by the occasional pieces
he contributed to the Rhapsody. He was the eldest son of the
unfortunate Secretary Davison. He was the author of a poetical
translation of the Psalms.

Besides the contributors to Tottel's Miscellany already men-
tioned, we may note the names of Sir Francis Bryan, a nephew
of Lord Berners, and George Boleyn, Viscount Rochfort, a brother
of Anne Boleyn. The popular Miscellany was read and utilized
by Shakespeare, and it is also said to have soothed the imprison-
ment of Mary Queen of Scots. Her Majesty is said to have
written the following two lines from it with a diamond on a pane
of glass in one of the windows of Fotheringay Castle :

And from the top of all my trust
Mishap hath thrown me in the dust.

SCOTTISH POETS

Sir David Lyndsay (circa 1490-1555) held the high office of Lyon
King at Arms, and was a close personal friend of King James V.,
to whom he acted as tutor and companion. Lyndsay was born
in the county of Fife, and educated at St. Andrews University.
His poems are said to have helped on the Reformation in Scot-

MINOR POETS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 147

land. His first poem, The Dreme, was written in the year 1528.
Perhaps the most pleasing of all his works is The Historic of
Squyer Meldrum. It deals with the adventures of the Laird of
Cleish and Binns, a gentleman who served as a soldier in France
during the war of 1513. It is the last poem that bears any close
resemblance in manner to the old metrical romance. In his
satires he attacked the three estates — Monarchs, Barons, and
Clergy — with much severity. These works were full of humour
and coarseness. Mr. Hallam says of him : ' In the ordinary
style of his versification he seems not to rise much above the
prosaic and tedious rhymes of the fifteenth century. His
descriptions are as circumstantial without selection as theirs ;
and his language, partaking of a ruder dialect, is still more
removed from our own.'

Alexander Scott (flourished in 1562) was the author of some
satires, and a number of miscellaneous poems, ' the prevailing
amatory character of which has caused him to be called The
Scottish Anacreon, though there are many points wanting to com-
plete his resemblance to the Teian Bard.' The following lines
are from his Rondel of Love :

Lo, what it is to luve,

Learn ye that list to pruve,
By me, I say, that no ways may

The grund of greif remuve,
But still decay, both nicht and day ;

Lo, what it is to luve !

Sir Richard Maitland (1496-1586) was the father of the Secre-
tary Lethington of Scottish history. He lived at Lethington,
in East Lothian, where he occupied his leisure in writing and
collecting poems. His style is regarded as resembling that of
Lyndsay. We append five lines of his Satire on the Town

Ladies :

Some wins of the borrowstoun
Sae wonder vain are. and wantoun,
In warld they wait1 not what to weir :
On claithis they ware2 mony a croun ;
And all for newfangleness of geir.:t

Alexander Montgomery (died about 1607) was the author of
an allegorical poem called The Cherry and the Slae, which was
issued in 1597. It is designed to emphasize the contrast between

1 Know. * Spend. 3 Attire.

10 — 2

148 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

virtue and vice. It was very popular for some time, but is
now almost forgotten, though Burns copied the metre in which
it is written.

Alexander Hume (circa 1560-1609) was ' a stern and even
gloomy Puritan/ who studied law for awhile, but eventually
became a clergyman. He was Minister of Logic when he died,
in 1609. He published a volume of Hymns or Sacred Songs in the
year 1599. The best of these is entitled The Day Estival, which
begins thus :

O perfect Light, which shed away

The darkness from the light,
And set a ruler o'er the day,
Another o'er the night.

Thy glory, when the day forth flies,

More vively does appear,
Nor at mid-day unto our eyes
The shining sun is clear.

George Buchanan (1506-1582) wrote a Latin version of the
Psalms. He was born in the county of Stirling in 1506, and
was distinguished as a poet and historian. He wrote Latin
poetry with the purity and grace of an ancient Roman.

GREATER POETS OF THE SEVEN-
TEENTH CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS
BEN JONSON

1574-1637

Here lies Jonson with the rest

Of the poets, but the best.

Reader, would'st thou more have known ?

Ask his story, not the stone ;

That will speak, what this can't tell

Of his glory, so farewell !

Epitaph by ROBERT HERRICK.

' O RARE Ben Jonson !' Such are the words inscribed on the
tomb of a poet who has been classed with Shakespeare in the
annals of English literature. Some critics have even gone so
far as to consider him the superior of the bard of Avon in solidity
of genius and extent of learning, but others (and these are the
most impartial) are content with assigning him the next place
to that occupied by the great Dramatist.

'There are periods/ says Schlegel, the great German critic,
' when the human mind makes all at once gigantic strides in
an art previously almost unknown, as if, during its long sleep,
it had been collecting strength for such an effort. The age of
Elizabeth was in England an epoch for dramatic poetry. This
Queen, during her long reign, witnessed the first infantine
attempts of the English theatre, and its most masterly produc-
tions. Shakespeare had a lively feeling of this general and rapid
development of qualities not before called into exercise.' Ben
Jonson was one of the few dramatic poets who attained to great

149

150 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

distinction in the age which also produced Shakespeare, Mas-
singer, and Beaumont and Fletcher.

This poet- was born in 1574, at Westminster. He was the
posthumous son of a clergyman, who died one month before the
birth of his distinguished son. His early education was received
at a grammar school in the neighbourhood of his home, under
Camden, who was one of the best teachers of the time. His
mother married again, her second husband being a bricklayer,
and Ben was taken away from school by his stepfather, who
set him to the trade which he himself followed. This occupa-
tion was, it need hardly be said, extremely irksome and uncon-
genial to Ben, and one of his many biographers tells us that Sir
Walter Raleigh, on hearing of the state of things, became inter-
ested in his welfare, and sent him to the Continent as tutor to
his son. But neither did this employment suit the aspirations
of the future poet. He joined the army as a volunteer, and
fought against the Spaniards in Holland. It is said that he
proved himself a brave soldier, killing a man on one occasion, at
least, in single combat. After the campaign in question, he
returned to his native land, and being entirely destitute, was
forced to use his pen — that little instrument which, ' beneath
the rule of men entirely great/ is ' mightier than the sword.

During this period he is said to have fought a duel, killed his
antagonist, and suffered a term of imprisonment in consequence.
In prison he became a Roman Catholic, and for a number of
years afterwards professed that religion. It has been stated by
various historians that he was for awhile a student at St. John's
College, Cambridge, but, according to Mr. Shaw, at least, this
statement is ' discredited by his own silence.'

He began his theatrical career at the age of twenty, and at
this early age he also married. Joining a party of strolling
players, he made his first appearance at the Green Curtain,
an obscure theatre near Shoreditch. He failed as an actor, and
then took to writing plays. Some of these, it is said, fell into
the hands of Shakespeare, who admired them, and encouraged
the young author to persevere. But this is also doubted by
accurate historians. Jonson imposed upon himself the task of
writing a play every year. His first and most successful drama
was Every Man in His Humour, and was composed in 1598.
It was a failure at first. The fact that its action and characters

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 151

were Italian may have in a measure accounted for this. Be
that as it may, it is recorded that ' Shakespeare, who was then
in the full blaze of his popularity, advised the young aspirant
to make some changes in the piece, and to transfer its action to
England.' He took the advice, and two years afterwards the
comedy, with considerable alterations, was reproduced at
Shakespeare's own theatre, the Globe, this time with marked
success. The part of Old Knowel, in this piece, is one of the
few which Shakespeare himself is known to have acted. From
that moment Jonson's, star began to rise, and rose rapidly and
surely. Queen Elizabeth became his patroness, and he became
' a man of mark and likelihood.'

In 1599 he produced Every Man out of His Humour. This is
not so clever a performance as its predecessor. Cynthia's
Revels and The Poetaster then appeared, and the rivalry and con-
tention which cast a gloom over his later life began about this
time. This was in a measure his own fault. He had attacked
two other dramatists, Dekker and Marston, in The Poetaster.
To this attack Dekker replied in a very spirited manner in his
Satiromastix, with the result that Jonson produced nothing
worthy of note for two years. During this period of silence he
is described as ' living upon one Townsend. and scorning the
world.' In 1603 he blossomed forth once more as the author
of Sejanus, a classic drama. Soon after the accession of James I.
the poet collaborated with Chapman and Marston in the com-
position of a comedy called Eastward Hoe. This work was con-
demned by the Court, on account of certain reflections which
it cast upon the Scottish nation, and upon the King for the
favour which he bestowed upon it. The delinquents were cast
into prison, and threatened with facial disfigurement, some
historians saying that they were condemned to have their nose
slit. They were not formally tried for the offence, and when
they were liberated, Jonson gave a banquet to his friends. His
mother, who was present, produced a paper of poison, which
she declared she had intended to administer to Ben in his liquor,
taking also a dose for herself, rather than submit to the disfigure-
ment of her son.

Between 1603 and 1619 Jonson produced some of his best
works in quick succession. These comprised his three finest
comedies — Volpone, Epicene, and The Alchemist; and Catiline,

152 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

his second classical tragedy. In 1619 he was made Poet
Laureate, and received a pension of a hundred marks. The
works of Jonson amount in all to about fifty. ' Studding his
dramatic works, like gems of the purest water and finest cutting,
are numerous songs, which have not been surpassed by any of
our English lyrists.'1

Jonson made a tour through France in 1613, and was honoured,
on his return, by the University of Oxford, which conferred on
him the degree of Master of Arts. His farce, Bartholomew's
Fair, was performed the same year at the Hope Theatre, and
in 1616 he produced The Devil is an Ass. His health began to
give way between 1625 and 1629, he became impoverished, and
was helped by Charles I. with one hundred pounds. The King
also raised his salary as Poet Laureate to that amount per
annum, and added thereto a tierce of Spanish wine.

The character of this great poet was not without serious
blemishes. He seems to have contracted a roughness of manner
and habits of intemperance, which contrasted very strongly
with the smoothness and beauty of his diction. Drummond, of
Hawthorn den, to whom Jonson paid his last visit to Scotland,
kept a diary of his conversation, which was subsequently pub-
lished. In it he says :

' He (Jonson) is a great lover and praiser of himself; a con-
temner and scorner of others ; jealous of every word and action
of those about him, especially after drink, which is one of the
elements in which he liveth ; a dissembler of ill parts which
reign in him ; a bragger of some good that he wanteth ;
thinketh nothing well but what he himself or some of his
friends or countrymen have said or done ; he is passionately
kind and angry ; careless either to gain or keep ; vindictive,
but, if well answered, at himself ; for any religion, as being
versed in both (Protestant and Catholic) ; interpreteth best
sayings and deeds often to the worst ; oppressed with fantasy,
which hath ever mastered his reason, a general disease in many
poets.'

Yet Jonson was popular when in his better moods. His love
of conviviality, conversational powers, and literary fame,
caused him to be much sought after in intellectual society.
Sir Walter Raleigh founded the ' Mermaid Club,' and Jonson>

1 Dr. Collier's History of English Literature.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 153

Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other poets, were
members. At the Falcon Tavern in Southwark they held their
revels. ' Many were the " wit combats " betwixt Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson,' says Fuller, ' which two I beheld like a Spanish
great galleon and an English man-of-war : Master Jonson, like
the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in
his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war,
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides,
tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness
of his wit and invention.'

In 1632 and 1634 Ben produced his Magnetic Lady, and the
Tale of a Tub. These were the last of his dramatic writings.
When he was nearing the end of his career, he commenced a
musical drama of singular merit, entitled the Sad Shepherd,
but this work he left uncompleted.

His works have been criticised by a large number of writers
of established reputation. Amongst the most recent may be
mentioned Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Gifford, and Campbell. But
the best and most accurate description of his genius as a poet
is that of Lord Clarendon, who says of him : ' His name can
never be forgotten, having, by his very good learning, very
much reformed the stage, and indeed English poetry itself.
His natural advantages were, judgment to order and govern
fancy, rather than excess of fancy ; his productions being
slow and upon deliberation. Yet these abound with great
wit and fancy, and will live accordingly ; and surely as he did
exalt the English language, eloquence, propriety, and mascu-
line expression, so he was the best judge of, and fittest to pre-
scribe rules to, poetry and poets, of any man who had lived
with or before him.'

Dryden also greatly admired the poetical genius of Jonson,
and has warmly eulogized him.

Jonson died in harness. He wrote up to the last, an attack
of palsy bringing his days to a close on the i6th of August,
1637, at the age of sixty-three. He lies buried under a small
stone in the north-west end of Westminster Abbey, and upon
the stone is the laconic inscription with which this sketch

begins :

O rare Ben Jonson !

154 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'CYNTHIA'S REVELS'

SONG OF HESPERUS

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,

Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,

State in wonted manner keep.
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright !

Earth, let not thy envious shade

Dare itself to interpose ;
Cynthia's shining orb was made

Heaven to clear when day did close.
Bless us, then, with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright !

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,

And thy crystal-shining quiver :
Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright !

FROM 'CATILINE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY

ACT V., SCENE 5

*****
You might have lived in servitude or exile,
Or safe at Rome, depending on the great ones,
But that you thought these things unfit for men ;
And in that thought you then were valiant ;
For no man ever yet changed peace for war
But that he means to conquer. Hold that purpose.
There's more necessity you should be such,
In fighting for yourselves, than they for others.
He's base that trusts his feet, whose hands are arm'd.
Methinks I see Death and the Furies waiting
What we will do, and all the heaven at leisure
For the great spectacle. Draw then your swords ;
And if our destiny envy our virtue
The honour of the day, yet let us care
To sell ourselves at such a price as may
Undo the world to buy us, and make Fate,
While she tempts ours, fear her own estate.

FROM ' THE FOREST '

FAREWELL TO THE WORLD

False world, good-night ! Since thou hast brought

That hour upon thy morn of age,
Henceforth I quit thee from my thought —

My part is ended on thy stage.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 155

I know thy forms are studied arts,

Thy subtle ways be narrow straits,
Thy courtesy but sudden starts,

And what thou call'st thy gifts, are baits.

I know, too, that thou strut and paint,

Yet thou art both shrunk up and old,
That only fools make thee a saint,

And all thy good is to be sold.

I know thou whole art but a shop

Of toys and trifles, traps and snares,
To take the weak, or make them stop :

Yet thou art falser than thy wares.

And, knowing this, should I yet stay,

Like such as blow away their lives,
And never will redeem a day,

Enamoured of their golden gyves ?

Now for my peace will I go far,

As wanderers do, that still do roam ;

But make my strengths, such as they are,
Here in my bosom, and at home. "

FROM THE EPILOGUE TO 'EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS
HUMOUR'

Yet humble as the earth do I implore,

Oh Heaven,- that she1 . . .

. . . may suffer most late change

In her admired and happy government :

May still this Island be called Fortunate,

And rugged Treason tremble at the sound,

When Fame shall speak it with an emphasis.

Let foreign Polity2 be dull as lead,

And pale invasion come with half a heart,

When he but looks upon her blessed soil.

The throat of War be stopped within her land,

And turtle-footed 3 Peace dance fairy rings

About her court ; where never may there come

Suspect4 or danger, but all trust and safety.

Let Flattery be dumb, and Envy blind

In her dread presence ! Death himself admire her ;

And may her virtues make him to forget

The use of his inevitable hand !

Fly from her, Age ; sleep, Time, before her throne !

Our strongest wall falls down when she is gone.

1 Queen Elizabeth. - Intrigue.

3 Compare Milton, ' Peace, with turtle-wing.' 4 Suspicion.

156 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

TO CELIA1

i

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine ;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst, that from the soul doth rise,

Doth ask a drink divine :
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be ;
But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me,
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself but thee.

EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother ;
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee !

FROM 'EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR

ADDRESS TO A RECKLESS YOUTH

Knowell. What would I have yonder ? I'll tell you, kinsman ;
Learn to be wise, and practise how to thrive,
That I would have you do : and not to spend
Your coin on every bauble that you fancy,
Or every foolish brain that humours you.
I would not have you to invade each place,
Nor thrust yourself on all societies,
Till men's affections, or your own desert,
Should worthily invite you to yon rank.
He that is so respectless in his courses,
Oft sells his reputation, as cheap market.
Nor would I you should melt away yourself
In flashing bravery, lest, while you affect
To make a blaze of gentry to the world,
A little puff of scorn extinguish it,
And you be left like an unsavoury snuff,
Whose property is only to offend.

1 This song is a translation from a Collection of Love Letters, by the
Greek Sophist Philostratus.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 157

I'd ha' you sober, and contain yourself ;

Not that your sail be bigger than your boat ;

But moderate your expenses now (at first)

As you may keep the same proportion still.

Nor stand so much on your gentility,

Which is an airy, and mere borrow'd thing,

From dead men's dust, and bones ; and none of yours,

Except you make, or hold it.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

Beaumont, 1586-1616 ; Fletcher, 1576-1625

FRANCIS BEAUMONT was the son of Judge Beaumont, of the
Court of Common Pleas. He was born at Grace-Dieu, in Leices-
tershire, in the year 1586. He was educated at Cambridge, and
entered as a law student at the Inner Temple. He does not
appear to have prospered in his legal studies. He married a
lady of noble rank, and had two daughters. He died on the
6th of March, 1616, in the thirty-first year of his age. He was
buried at the entrance of St. Benedict's Chapel in Westminster
Abbey. There is no inscription on his tomb, but Sir John
Beaumont, his elder brother, and Bishop Corbet, have written
epitaphs in memory of him.

John Fletcher was the son of Richard Fletcher, Bishop of
London, a prelate who did not enjoy a very enviable reputation.
He, too, was educated at Cambridge, but the details of his life,
beyond those directly connected with his literary work, are but
scanty. He died of the plague in London in 1625, and was
buried in the church of St. Mary, Southwark. No memorial
was placed over his grave.

Beaumont and Fletcher were inseparable friends. Their
tastes and ambitions were similar, and their dispositions
generally so much in harmony that they produced between
them, under their joint names, upwards of fifty tragedies,
comedies, and other works. They were both scholarly and
accomplished men, and the amount and literary merit of their
works is nothing short of marvellous in view of the brevity
of their respective lives. The excellence of these compositions,
has caused their authors to be compared with Ben Jonson,
though the latter is distinctly their superior in point of scholar-
ship. Their brotherly affection is said to have been utterly

158 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

devoid of any feeling of jealousy. In the words of Shake-
speare :

They still ha.ve slept together,

Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together ;

And whereso'er they went, like Juno's swans,

Still they went coupled and inseparable.

The works of these two authors are said to have been more
popular in their own day than were the works of Shakespeare
and Jonson in theirs. In their partnership there was a notable
' division of labour.' Beaumont is supposed to have followed
the bent of his peculiar genius by writing the tragedies, while
Fletcher, ' a lighter and more sunny spirit, was fonder of the
comic muse.' Viewed from a purely literary standpoint, their
plays are witty, elegant, and vivacious, reflecting the manners
and customs of that upper class of society to which the writers
belonged.

Campbell, in his criticisms on the British poets, makes a
learned comparison between the respective merits of these two
authors. He says :

' The theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher contains all manner
of good and evil. There are such extremes of grossness and
magnificence in their drama, so much sweetness and beauty
interspersed with views of nature either falsely romantic, or
vulgar beyond reality ; there is so much to animate and amuse
us, and yet so much that we would willingly overlook, that I
cannot help comparing the contrasted impressions which they
make, to those which we receive from visiting some great and
ancient city, picturesquely but irregularly built, glittering with
spires and surrounded with gardens, but exhibiting in many
quarters the lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have
scenes of wealthy and high life which remind us of courts and
palaces, frequented by elegant females and high-spirited gallants ;
whilst their noble old martial characters, with Caractacus in
the midst of them, may inspire us with the same kind of regard
which we pay to the rough-hewn magnificence of an ancient
fortress. Unhappily, the same simile, without being hunted
down, will apply but too faithfully to the nuisances of their
drama. Their language is often basely profligate. Shake-
speare's and Jonson's indelicacies are but casual blots ; whilst
theirs are sometimes essential colours of their painting, and
extend, in one or two instances, to entire and offensive scenes.'

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 159

It would be obviously ponderous beyond excuse to give a
detailed account of the fifty-two separate works of these two
distinguished poets. Even Mr. Shaw shrinks from such a task,
on the ground that ' a mere enumeration of the principal dramas
of these animated and prolific playwrights will be found tire-
some and unsatisfactory.' More or less exhaustive accounts of
them may be found in Hallam's Introduction to the Literature
of Europe, and the thirty-eighth volume of the Edinbitrgh
Review. The Woman Hater, Philaster, Two Noble Kinsmen,
King and No King, The Maid's Tragedy, The Honest Alan's
Fortune, and The Scornful Lady, are considered to be amongst
the best of their works. Perhaps the highest compliment
which can be paid them is to say that in delineation of character
they not uncommonly bear a resemblance to some of the works
of Shakespeare.

These ' most inviolable of friends, the Orestes and Pylades of
the poetical world,' are thus spoken of by Hazlitt :

* They are not safe teachers of morality ; they tamper with it
like an experiment in corpore vili. . . . The tone of Shake-
speare's writings is manly and bracing ; theirs is at once in-
sipid and meretricious in the comparison. . . . The dramatic
paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are to all appearance
tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and laxity of
principle. I do not say that this was the character of the
men, but its strikes me as the character of their minds. The
two things are very ' distinct. . . . They were the first who
laid the foundation of the artificial diction and tinsel pomp of
the next generation of poets.' Yet he adds : ' They are lyrical
and descriptive poets of the highest order ; every page of their
writings is a florilegium. . . . There is hardly a passion which
they have not touched in their devious range, and whatever they
touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking feature ;
they are masters of style and versification, in almost every
variety of which they are capable ; in comic wit and spirit they
are scarcely surpassed by any writers of any age.'

Two of the plays included in the common editions of Beau-
mont and Fletcher are of such special merit that they are worthy
of separate notice. The Faithful Shepherdess, which is from the
unaided pen of Fletcher, is a pastoral drama of which it has been
truly said that we have nothing in the language so truly pastoral

160 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

and so exquisitely poetical. The Comus is copied from it, and
although Milton may have surpassed the original in stately and
majestic poetry, it is beyond a question that Fletcher, besides
the merit of priority, is more redolent of life and nature. Were
it not for its indelicacy, the play would be faultless.

The Two Noble Kinsmen was formerly considered to be the
joint production of Fletcher and Shakespeare, but the more
recent idea concerning it is that Shakespeare had no connection
with it. On what this belief is grounded has not yet been made
quite clear. The title-page of the first edition of the play bears
the names of Shakespeare and Fletcher ; all the old critics
speak of Shakespeare as one of its authors ; the internal evi-
dence goes a long way to support the idea ; and, further, the
truth of the statement was never apparently doubted until
modern times, although many of Shakespeare's friends were
living when the play was published. From these considera-
tions it would seem as if the genuineness of the belief with
regard to it in the first instance need not be questioned. Lang-
baine says decidedly that Shakespeare was one of the authors.
' None of the plays which Fletcher alone wrote are composed in
the same style, or exhibit the same lofty imagination, and if
there were any other dramatist, save Shakespeare, who could
attain to such a height of excellence, he has certainly handed
down none of his compositions to posterity.' If Shakespeare
was not the one to assist in this work, then who was the one ?

The following plays were undoubtedly the joint productions
of Beaumont and Fletcher : Philaster, King and No King, The
Maid's Tragedy, The Scornful Lady, The Honest Man's Fortune,
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Coxcomb, Cupid's Revenge,
and The Captain.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

CONSOLATION OF EARLY DEATH

Sweet prince, the name of Death was never terrible

To him that knew to live ; nor the loud torrent

Of all afflictions, singing as they swim,

A gall of heart, but to a guilty conscience :

Whilst we stand fair, though by a two-edged storm

We find untimely falls, like early roses,

Bent to the earth, we bear our native sweetness.

When we are little children,

And cry and fret for every toy comes 'cross us,

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 161

How sweetly do we show, when sleep steals on us !

When we grow great, but our affection greater,

And struggle with this stubborn twin, born with us,

And tug and pull, yet still we find a giant :

Had we not then the privilege to sleep

Our everlasting sleep, he would make us idiots.

The memory and monuments of good men

Are more than lives ; and though their tombs want tongues,

Yet have they eyes that daily sweat their losses,

And such a tear from stone no time can value.

To die both young and good are Nature's curses,

As the world says ; ask Truth, they are bounteous blessings,

For then we reach at heaven in our full virtues,

And fix ourselves new stars, crown'd with our goodness.

FOLDING THE FLOCKS

Shepherds all, and maidens fair,

Fold your folds up ; for the air

'Gins to thicken, and the sun

Already his great course hath run.

See the dew-drops, how they kiss

Every little flower that is ;

Hanging on their velvet heads.

Like a string of crystal beads.

See the heavy clouds low falling,

And bright Hesperus down calling

The dead night from under ground ;

At whose rising, mists unsound,

Damps and vapours, fly apace,

And hover o'er the smiling face

Of these pastures, where they come,

Striking dead both bud and bloom.

Therefore from such danger lock

Every one his loved flock ;

And let your dogs lie loose without,

Lest the wolf come as a scout

From 'the mountain, and, ere day,

Bear a lamb or kid away ;

Or the crafty, thievish fox,

Break upon your simple flocks ;

To secure yourself from these

Be not too secure in ease ;

So shall you good shepherds prove,

And deserve your master's love.

Now, good-night ! may sweetest slumbers

And soft silence fall in numbers

On your eyelids : so farewell :

Thus I end my evening knell.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT

GOD'S PROVIDENCE THE HONEST MAN'S FORTUNE

O Man, thou image of thy Maker's good,
What can'st thou fear when breathed into thy blood
His Spirit is that built thee ? What dull sense
Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence,

II

162 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Who made the morning, and who placed the light

Guide to thy labours ? Who call'd up the night,

And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers

In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers ?

Who gave thee knowledge ? Who so trusteth thee

To let thee grow so near Himself, the tree ?

Must He then be distrusted ? Shall His frame

Discourse with Him, why thus and thus I am ?

He made the angels thine, thy fellows all :

Nay, even thy servants when devotions call :

O canst thou be so stupid, then., so dim,

To seek a saving influence, and lose Him ?

Can stars protect thee ? or can poverty,

Which is the light to heaven, put out His eye ?

He is my star, in Him all truth I find,

All influence, all fate ; and when my mind

Is furnish'd with His fulness, my poor story

Should outlive all their age and all their glory.

PARAPHRASE OF LINES ON THE TOMBS IN
WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Mortality, behold and fear

What a change of flesh is here !

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within these heaps of stones ;

Here they lie, had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands,

Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust

They preach, ' In greatness is no trust.'

Here's an acre sown indeed

With the richest royallest seed

That the earth did e'er suck in

Since the first man died for sin :

Here the bones of birth have cried

' Though gods they were, as men they died !'

Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings :

Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

JOHN FLETCHER
MELANCHOLY

Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly :
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see 't,
But only melancholy,
O sweetest melancholy !
Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 163

A look that's fasten'd to the ground,

A tongue chain' d up without a sound !

Fountain heads and pathless groves,

Places which pale passion loves !

Moonlight walks, when all the fowls

Are warmly housed, save bats and owls !

A midnight bell, a parting groan !

These are the sounds we feed upon :
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley ;
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

REV. GEORGE HERBERT
1593-1633

THE claim of George Herbert to be called a ' Poet of the English
Church ' will be universally admitted. All that lives, and will
live, of his poetical works has a direct bearing upon ecclesiastical
matters.

He was born in the Castle of Montgomery on the 3rd of April,
1593. His father, Richard Herbert, was descended from an
ancient and distinguished line of ancestors. He had seven sons,
of whom the subject of this memoir was the fourth. His
mother was a member of the Newport family, and the eldest son
became Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and celebrated as a Deist.
Lord Herbert says of his brother George that ' his life was most
holy and exemplary, insomuch that about Salisbury, where he
lived beneficed for many years, he was little less than sainted.
He was not exempt from passion and choler, being infirmities to
which all our race is subject, but that excepted, without reproach
in his actions.' The poet had also three sisters, and of her ten
children the mother would often say .that they were Job's number
and Job's distribution, and as often bless God that they were
neither defective in their shapes nor in their reason. His father
died in 1597.

The future poet spent a happy and contented childhood, under
the care of his mother and a clerical tutor, until he was twelve
years old. when he was sent to Westminster School, and placed
under the care of Dr. Neale, Dean of Westminster, and of Mr.
Ireland, the Headmaster. Izaak Walton says :

' The beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit showed, and
became so eminent and lovely in this, his innocent age, that

II — 2

164 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

he seemed to be marked out for piety, and to become the care
of Heaven, and of a particular good angel to guide and guard him.
And thus he continued in that school, till he came to be perfect
in the learned languages, and especially in the Greek tongue,
in which he afterwards proved an excellent critic.'

A King's scholarship enabled him to leave school at the age
of fifteen, and proceed to Trinity College, Cambridge. There
he devoted all his best energies to the acquisition of knowledge,
and informed his mother that he had made up his mind to con-
secrate to God his ' poor abilities in poetry.' He graduated B.A.
in 1611, and in 1615, at the age of twenty- two, proceeded M.A.,
and was elected Major Fellow of his college. In 1619 he was
chosen as Public Orator of the University, at a salary of £30
a year. The discharge of the duties of this office brought him into
connection with the Court of King James I. That monarch
presented the University of Cambridge with his book Basilikon
Doron, which was the occasion of Herbert's first notable exercise
of his privilege as Orator. He sent a letter to King James, at
the close of which he wrote :

Quid Vaticanam Bodleianamque objicis hospes !
Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber.

So excellent was the Latin in which this letter was couched
that the King asked his kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, if he
knew the writer. The answer was that ' he knew him very well,
and that he was his kinsman ; but he loved him more for his
learning and virtue than for that he was of his name and family.'
The King smiled and asked the Earl's leave ' that he might love
him too, for he took him to be the jewel of that University.' He
was by this time in the habit of writing courtly poems. The
King continued to notice him, and after awhile gave him a sinecure
office at Court which brought him £120 a year. At this time the
great ambition of Herbert was to be made a Secretary of State,
and he applied himself with great diligence to the study of the
French, Italian, and Spanish languages. But the deaths of the
Duke of Richmond and Marquis of Hamilton, in 1625, followed
by that of the King himself, put an end to the poet's aspirations
in this direction. Under the altered circumstances he was not
slow or loth to abandon, ' the painted pleasure of Court life for
the study of Divinity.' He went into Kent, and studied so hard

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 165

that he seriously impaired his health, his object being to take
Holy Orders. This accomplished, he was presented by the
Bishop of Lincoln in 1626 to the Prebend of Layton Ecclesia.
In this position he restored his church with the assistance of
many friends.

An attack of ague caused him to retire for awhile to Woodford,
in Essex, and afterwards to Dauntsey, in Wiltshire, where he met
a lady whom he married after three or four days' acquaintance.
She was the fourth of Mr. Danvers' nine daughters. Three
months afterwards he was presented to the Rectory of Bemerton
by Charles I. Influenced by the advice of Archbishop Laud,
he accepted the benefice and spent the remainder of his life in
the discharge of its duties. A touching story is told of his in-
duction. According to custom, he was locked in the church by
himself, that he might ring the bell before reopening it to his
parishioners. The people who were waiting outside became
impatient at his long delay, and, looking in through the window,
saw him prostrate in prayer before the altar, where he was
making a vow to set a good example to other clergymen. So
exemplary was his life afterwards that his friend, Nicholas
Ferrar, has described him as ' a peer to primitive saints, and
more than a pattern to his own age.' He died on the 3rd of
March, 1632. On the Sunday before his death he suddenly rose
from his couch, called for one of his instruments, and said :

My God, my God,
« My music shall find Thee,

And every string
Shall have his attribute to sing.

And having tuned it, he played and sang :

The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on Time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the Eternal Glorious King.
On Sunday Heaven's door stands ope ;
Blessings are plentiful and rife,
More plentiful than hope.

It was thus that the soul of ' Holy George Herbert ' passed away.
It is a well-known fact that Herbert used to walk twice a week
to Salisbury Cathedral and back. Walton relates an anecdote
of one of these expeditions. When Herbert was some way on his
journey he overtook a poor man, standing by a poorer horse
that had fallen down beneath too heavy a burden ; and seeing

166 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

the distress of the one and the suffering of the other, he put off
his canonical dress and helped the man to unload, and afterwards
to reload the horse. He then gave the man money to refresh
himself and the animal, and departed, telling the man before he
went that if he loved himself he should be merciful to his beast.
This incident was utilized by Cooper, the Royal Academician, as
a subject for an interesting design.

Herbert's poems were published collectively in a volume which
he called The Temple, Sacred Poems, and Private Ejaculations.
It appeared in 1633. The first poem is called The Church Porch.
It is full of morality, piety, and beauty. Almost as well known
as Denham's isolated lines to the Thames are these :

When once thy foot enters the church, be bare.
God is more there than thou ; for thou art there
Only by His permission. Then beware ;
And make thyself all reverence and fear.

Kneeling ne'er spoil'd silk stocking. Quit thy state :

All equal are within the church's gate.

The poem is thickly studded with gems of pious admonition,
a few of which are contained in the following typical verses :

Resort to sermons, but to prayers most :

Praying's the end of preaching. O be drest !
Stay not for th' other pin ; why thou hast lost
A joy for it worth worlds. Thus hell doth jest
Away thy blessings, and extremely flout thee,
Thy clothes being fast, but thy soul loose about thee.

In time of service seal up both thine eyes,

And send them to thine heart, that, spying sin,
They may weep out the stains by them did rise ;

Those whose door being shut, all by the ear comes in.
Who marks in church-time other's symmetry,
Makes all their beauty his deformity.

Judge not the preacher ; for he is thy Judge.

If thou mislike him, thou conceiv'st him not.
God calleth preaching folly : Do not grudge
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot.

The worst speak something good ; if all want sense,
God takes a text, and preacheth patience.

Some of these poems are artificially fanciful, in accordance
with the taste of that day. The Altar is a poem in the shape of
an altar ; Eagles' Wings are two poems in the shape of wings.
Among the most beautiful of the poems are The Sacrifice, Afflic-
tion, Conduct, and Sunday. I will quote one or two exquisite
specimens. Here is one on The Holy Scripture? :

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 167

Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,

And the configurations of their glorie,

Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,

But all the constellations of the storie.

Stars are poor books, and oftentimes do miss :
This book of stars lights to eternal bliss.

Dean Farrar, in an interesting article contributed to Great
Thoughts, gives the following useful collection of criticisms on
the poetry of Herbert. He tells that Headley, in his Ancient
English Poetry, ventured to say, ' His poetry is a compound of
enthusiasm without sublimity, and conceit without either in-
genuity or imagination.' So frivolous a criticism rises from lack
of all catholicity of taste, and does not distinguish the vitia
hominis from the vitia temporis. Herbert met the taste of his own
day, and was deeply influenced by his friend Dr. Donne. But
had he been so devoid of poetic merit, as Headley, with his
eighteenth-century standard, says, he could never have won such
testimonies as he did win from men of the highest genius and
supreme excellence. Archbishop Leighton loved his verse.
Charles I., in his prison at Carisbrook Castle, solaced his lonely
misery by reading him. Richard Crawshaw felt for him a genuine
admiration. Henry Vaughan, in the preface to Silex Scintil-
lans, rightly calls attention to the fact that Herbert's ' holy life
and verse ' was the first decided check to the foul and overflowing
stream of the monstrous wit of his times. Richard Baxter,
while he placed him, as a poet, far below Cowley, yet says,
' Heart- work and Heaven-work made up his books.' In his own
day, Lord Bacon and Donne estimate his genius most highly. If
Addison criticises his ' false wit,' Cowper, in his depression,
' found delight in reading him all day long.' Lastly, no less a
literary authority than the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge not
only spoke of him as ' that model of a man, a gentleman, and a
clergyman,' but says that ' the quaintness of some of his thoughts
— not of his diction, than which nothing can be more pure, manly,
and unaffected — has blinded modern readers to the great general
merits of his poems, which are for the most part exquisite in their
kind.'

Perhaps the loveliest poem in the book is that on Virtue :

Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky ;
The dews shall weep thy fall to-night.

For thou must die.

i68 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

\

Sweet rose ! whose hue, angry and brave,

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye ;
Thy root is ever in his grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring ! full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie ;

Thy music shows ye have your closes
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives ;

But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

One more quotation, but that a very memorable one, must
suffice to show how much gold may be digged out of this treasure-
house. It is a sonnet called Sin :

Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round !

Parents first season us, then schoolmasters
Deliver us in laws ; they send us bound

To rules of reason ; holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,

Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,

Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,

The sound of glory ringing in our ears ;
Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ;

Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears : —
Yet all thess fences, and their whole array,
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

FRANCIS QUARLES

1592-1644

THIS poet was born near Romford, in Essex, in the year 1592.
His father was Clerk of the Green Cloth, and Purveyor of the
Navy, under the Governments of Queen Elizabeth. He was
educated at Cambridge University, and studied law at Lincoln's
Inn. The Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James L, conferred
on him the office of Cup-bearer. Subsequently he was appointed
private secretary to Archbishop Ussher. He wrote a book called
The Loyal Convert, which was condemned by Parliament as of
a dangerous and seditious tendency, and, as a punishment, his
books were burnt and his property sequestrated. It is thought
that the severity of this penalty hastened his death, which
occurred in 1644.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 169

His most celebrated work is entitled Divine Emblems, which
are a number of poems illustrated by means of engravings ' filled
with what may be called allegory run mad.' The most that can
be said of them is that they are quaint and curious, the poems
possessing much cleverness and vigour of style, though without
great pretensions to polish or elegance. Other poems of this
author are Sion's Elegies, The School of the Heart, Hieroglyphics
of the Life of Man, and Histories of Samson, Job, Esther, and
Jonah. The writings of Quarles have in them much that is
beyond mere quaintness. Dignity, clearness of vision, sim-
plicity of style, and depth of feeling — all these qualities are to be
found in them. It has been truly said of him that no man had
a correcter notion of the beauty of style. He may fairly be looked
upon as having put into practice his own precept — ' Clothe not
thy language either with obscurity or affectation ; in the one
thou discoverest too much darkness, in the other too much light-
ness. He that speaks from the understanding to the under-
standing is the best interpreter.' Though a keen Royalist, his
works are not without a Puritan tone, and his poetry is further
to be accounted an ' extravagant specimen of the Metaphysical
School.'

MAN

Can he be fair, that withers at a blast ?

Or he be strong, that airy breath can cast ?

Can he be wise, that knows not how to live ?

Or he be rich, that nothing hath to give ?

Can he be young, that's feeble, weak, and wan ?

So fair, strong, wise, so rich, so young is man.

So fair is man, that death (a parting blast)

Blasts his fair flower, and makes him earth at last ;

So strong is man, that with a gasping breath

He totters, and bequeaths his strength to death :

So wise is man, that if with death he strive,

His wisdom cannot teach him how to live ;

So rich is man, that (all his debts being paid)

His wealth's the winding sheet wherein he's laid ;

So young is man, that, broke with care and sorrow,

He's old enough to-day to die to-morrow.

Why bragg'st thou then, thou worm of five feet long ?

Thou'rt neither fair, nor strong, nor wise, nor rich, nor young.

THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE

And what's a life ? A weary pilgrimage,
Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage
With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.

170 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And what's a life ? The flourishing array
Of the proud summer-meadow, which to-day
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay.

Read on this dial, how the shades devour

My short-lived winter's day ! hour eats up hour ;

Alas ! the total's but from eight to four.

Behold these lilies, which thy hands have made

Fair copies of my life, and open laid

To view, how soon they droop, how soon they fade !

Shade not that dial, night will blind too soon ;
My nonaged day already points to noon ;
How simple is my suit ! how small my boon !

Nor do I beg this slender inch to wile

The time away, or falsely to beguile

My thoughts with joy : here's nothing worth a smile.

THE VANITY OF THE WORLD

False world, thou ly'st ; thou canst not lend

The least delight ;
Thy favours cannot gain a friend,

They are so slight ;
Thy morning pleasures make an end

To please at night :

Poor are the wants that thou supply'st,
And yet thou vaunt'st, and yet thou vy'st
With heaven ; fond earth, thou boasts ; false world, thou ly'st.

Thy babbling tongue tells golden tales

Of endless treasure ;
Thy bounty offers easy sales

Of lasting pleasure ;
Thou ask'st the conscience what she ails,

And swear' st to ease her ;
There's none can want where thou supply'st ;
There's none can give where thou deny'st.
Alas ! fond world, thou boasts ; false world, thou ly'st.

What well-advised ear regards

What earth can say ?
Thy words are gold, but thy rewards

Are painted clay :
Thy cunning can but pack the cards,

Thou canst not play :
Thy game at weakest, still thou vy'st ;
If seen, and then revyv'd, deny'st :
Thou art not what thou seem'st ; false world, thou ly'st.

Thy tinsel bosom seems a mint

Of new-coined treasure ;
A paradise, that has no stint,

No change, no measure ;
A painted cask, but nothing in't,

Nor wealth, nor pleasure :
Vain earth ! that falsely thus comply' st
With man ; vain man ! that thou rely'st
On earth ; vain man, thou dot'st ; vain earth, thou ly'st.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 171

What mean dull souls, in this high measure,

To haberdash
In earth's base wares, whose greatest treasure

Is dross and trash ?
The height of whose enchanting pleasure

Is but a flash ?

Are these the goods that thou supply'st
Us mortals with ? Are these the high'st ?
Can these bring cordial peace ? false world, thou ly'st.

JAMES SHIRLEY
Circa 1594-1666

THE great line of distinguished dramatists of the Elizabethan
era, which began with Christopher Marlowe, came to an end
with James Shirley. He is supposed to have been born
in London about the year 1594. He was educated at
Merchant Taylors' School and at St. John's College, Oxford,
where he attracted the attention of Laud, who was as that time
Master. The Master treated Shirley with much kindness, but
dissuaded him from taking Holy Orders on account of a con-
spicuous mole on his left cheek. This disfigurement can be seen
in the portrait of the dramatist which hangs in the Bodleian
Library. He left Oxford without taking a degree, but went to
Catherine Hall, Cambridge, when he graduated in due course.
In 1623 he was appointed a master in St. Albans Grammar
School. He had previously taken Holy Orders, and was pre-
sented to a living, which he very soon resigned, on becoming a
convert to the Roman Catholic faith. In his twenty-ninth year
he gave up teaching and went on the stage.

Shirley's literary career began in 1618, when he published a
poem entitled Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers. No copy of this
poem can now be traced. His first play, entitled Love Tricks,
was licensed in 1623, but was not published until 1631, when its
title was altered to The School of Compliment. The Wedding, a
comedy, was published in 1629, and The Grateful Servant in 1630.
These last ' placed the poet high among the dwindling band of
dramatists who still kept up something of the great Elizabethan
tradition.'

In 1631 Shirley made his first appearance as a writer of
tragedies. His first essay in that direction was The Traitor.

172 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Some others followed, but he wisely came to the conclusion that
comedy was more in his line, and accordingly he reverted to that
class of writing. Twelve comedies were issued in close succes-
sion between the years 1631 and 1635. Of these the last — The
Lady of Pleasure — was the best. Charles I. said that The
Gamester was the best play he had seen for seven years. It was
acted in 1633.

Shirley paid a visit to Dublin, which was marked by the issue
of several plays, amongst which were St. Patrick for Ireland, The
Royal Master, and The Humorous Courtier. He returned to
England in 1640, and between that time and the date of the
closing of the theatres he wrote at least ten plays, of which the
best was entitled The Cardinal. In 1646 he issued a volume
containing his collected poems.

Shirley's manner is uniformly good. His strongest point is the
delineation of the doings of fashionable society. Only a portion
of his many plays, but that a large portion, has been preserved.

On September 2, 1642, the performance, or even the witnessing,
of theatrical performances, was declared to be a penal offence.
Fourteen years afterwards the drama was revived, but under
entirely new conditions. In the year of revival Shirley died,
having made his mark as one of the greatest of the brilliant group
of dramatists which saw the decline and fall of their art.

SONG FROM 'THE IMPOSTURE'

You virgins, that did late despair

To keep your wealth from cruel man.

Tie up in silk your careless hair —
Soft peace is come again.

Now lovers' eyes may gently shoot

A flame that will not kill ;
The drum was angry, but the lute

Shall whisper what you will.

Sing lo, lo ! for his sake,

Who hath restored your drooping heads ;

With choice of sweetest flowers, make
A garden where he treads.

Whilst we whole groves of laurel bring,

A pretty triumph to his brow,
Who is the master of our spring

And all the bloom we owe.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 173

DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST1

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things ;
There is no armour against fate ;
Death lays his icy hand on kings :
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field.
And plant fresh laurels where they kill ;
But their strong nerves at last must yield ;
They tame but one another still :
Early or late,
They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow,

Then boast no more your mighty deeds ;
Upon Death's purple altar now,

See where the victor-victim bleeds :
All heads must come
To the cold tomb,
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

REV. ROBERT HERRICK

1591-1674

THOUGH now accounted one of the sweetest lyrical poets of the
age in which he lived, the name of Robert Herrick was hardly
known until many years after his death. Dr. Drake, in his
Literary Hours, helped to save a number of his most pleasing
poems from unmerited oblivion. Ellis, in his Specimens,
rendered a like service, and other writers from time to time have
done him tardy justice. In his life there is nothing sufficiently
remarkable to demand a lengthy notice.

He was born in London in the year 1591, the son of a goldsmith
in Cheapside. He was educated at Cambridge, and took Holy
Orders. In 1629 he was presented by Charles I. to the living of
Dean Prior, in Devonshire. Here he spent nineteen years of
quiet and uninterrupted attention to his clerical duties, spending
much of his leisure in the composition of poetry. In his earlier
years he had made the friendship of some of the most notable

1 A lyric found in Shirley's masque, The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses.
It is said to have been much admired by Charles II., a fact at which no
critic will wonder.

174 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

writers of the day, including Ben Jonson and Selden. When
Cromwell came into power he was ejected, in 1647, as a Royalist,
and went to London. Here he continued to write, with the result
that he published his Hespevides and Noble Numbers in 1648.
On the restoration of the monarchy being accomplished, he was
readmitted to his benefice, in 1662, and again lived in literary
ease until his death, which took place in 1674.

Many of the lyrics of this poet are unsurpassed. ' To Blossoms,
To Daffodils, Gather the Rosebuds while ye may — names like these
suggest the sources whence his verses draw their many-coloured
beauty. Flowers, birds, fruit, gems, pretty women, and little
children are his favourite themes.' And yet the praise of his
works is not untinged with blame. While Dr. Collier lets him
pass with the words just quoted, Mr. Shaw finds in him ' the most
unaccountable mixture of sensual coarseness with exquisite re-
finement. Like the Faun of the ancient sculpture, his Muse
unites the bestial and the Divine.' Yet sweet and untainted are

lines like these :

TO DAFFODILS

Fair daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon ;
As yet the early rising sun

Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day
Has run

But to the even-song !
And, having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay as you

We have as short a spring,
As quick a growth to meet decay.
As you, or anything.

We die,
As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer's rain,
Or as the pearls of morning dew,

Ne'er to be found again.
and these :

ADDRESS TO THE MEADOWS IN WINTER
Ye have been fresh and green.

Ye have been fill'd with flowers :
And ye the walks have been

Where maids have spent their hours.
Ye have beheld where they

With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away

The richer cowslips home.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 175

TO BLOSSOMS

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast ?

Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here awhile,

To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.

What ! wer^ ye born to be

An hour or half's delight,

And so to bid good-night ?
'Twas pity Nature brought you forth

Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave ;

And after they have shown their pride,
Like you, awhile, "they glide
Into the grave.

UPON A CHILD THAT DIED

Here she lies, a pretty bud,
Lately made of flesh and blood,
Who as soon fell fast asleep
As her little eyes <lid peep.
Give her strewings, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her !

TO DIANEME

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which starlike sparkle in their skies ;
Nor be you proud, that you can see
All hearts your captives ; yours yet free :
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the love-sick air ;
When as that ruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone
When all your world of beauty's gone.

ABRAHAM COWLEY
1618-1667

To him no author was unknown.

Yet what he wrote was all his own ;

Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,

He did not steal, but emulate !

And when he would like them appear.

Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.

SIR JOHN DENHAM.

' I BELIEVE I can tell the particular little chance that filled my
head with such chimes of verses, as have never left ringing there.
I remember when I began to read, and to take pleasure in it,

176 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour, I know not by what
accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of
devotion — but there was wont to lie Spenser's works. This I
happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the
stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave
houses which I found everywhere (though my understanding
had little to do with all this), and, by degrees, with the tinkling
of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read
him all over before I was twelve years old.'

Such is the account which Abraham Cowley gives us of the
circumstances which first led him to delight in poetry.

This poet was born in Fleet Street, London, in the year 1618.
He was the posthumous son of a stationer. His widowed mother
found it difficult to afford her son a liberal education, but was
successful in procuring him an entry into Westminster School as
a King's scholar, from whence he proceeded in due course to
Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was elected a scholar in
1636. Having obtained the degree of M.A., he was expelled from
the University for his sympathy with the Royalist party, but
solaced himself by entering St. John's College, Oxford.

The poetical genius of Cowley began to show itself very early
in his career. At the age of fifteen he published a volume of
verse, entitled Poetical Blossoms, which attracted some attention,
as being far above the average of youthful productions. In his
college days he wrote a pastoral comedy, which was acted before
the University of Cambridge by members of Trinity College.
He is by all historians accounted one of the most accomplished
and learned writers of his time, and, though in course of time
his reputation as a poet has somewhat diminished, the loss of
fame has been attributed ' to that abuse of intellectual ingenuity,
that passion for learned, far-fetched, and recondite illustrations
which was to a certain extent the vice of his age.'

King Charles II., who had basely deserted him, declared after
his death that ' Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him
in England.' Dr. Aikin tells us that ' at the time of his death
Cowley certainly ranked as the first poet in England ; for Milton
•lay under a cloud, nor was the age qualified to appreciate him.'
Cowley was well acquainted with Greek and Latin literature,
and paraphrased the Odes of Anacreon, besides publishing Pin-
daric Odes. ' It may be affirmed,' says Dr. Johnson, ' without

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 177

any encomiastic fervour, that he brought to his poetic labours
a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished
with all the ornaments which books can supply ; that he was the
first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the
greater ode, and the gaiety of the less ; that he was equally
qualified for sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights ; that he
was among those who freed translation from servility, and
instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his
side.'

Miscellanies ; Elegies ; The Mistress, a collection of cold,
metaphysical love poems ; a Latin work on Plants, in six books,
partly in elegiac, partly in heroic verse ; and the Davideis, a
heroic poem originally intended to be in twelve books, but only
four of which are written, complete the list of Cowley's poetical
works.

Mr. Chambers tells us that Cowley was the most popular poet
of his time, but his fame rapidly decayed after his death.
Dry den said of him : ' Though he must always be thought a
great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer.' Alexander
Pope asked :

Who now reads Cowley ? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit :
Forget his epic, nay, Pindaric art.
But still I love the language of his heart.

Cowley died in 1667, and was interred in Westminster Abbey.

FROM THE ELEGY ' ON THE DEATH OF MR. WILLIAM HERVEY

It was a dismal and a fearful night,

Scarce could the morn drive on th' unwilling light,

When sleep, death's image, left my troubled breast,

By something liker death possessed.
My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow,

And on my soul hung the dull weight

Of some intolerable fate.
What bell was that ? Ah me ! too much I know.

My sweet companion, and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here,
Thy end for ever, and my life to moan ?

O thou hast left me all alone !
Thy soul and body, when death's agony

Besieged around thy noble heart,

Did not with more reluctance part
Than I, my dearest friend, do part from thee.

178 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

My dearest friend, would I had died for thee !
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be.
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do,

If once my grief prove tedious too.
Silent and sad I walk about all day,

As sullen ghosts stalk speechless by

Where their hid treasures lie ;
Alas, my treasure's gone ! why do I stay ?

He was my friend, the truest friend on earth ;
A strong and mighty influence joined our birth.
Nor did we envy the most sounding name

By friendship given of old to fame.
None but his brethren he, and sisters, knew

Whom the kind youth preferred to me ;

And even in that we did agree,
For much above myself I loved them too.

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights ?
Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love,

Wondered at us from above.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,

But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry ;
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.

Ye fields of Cambridge — our dear Cambridge ! — say,

Have ye not seen us walking every day ?

Was there a tree about which did not know
The love betwixt us two ?

Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade ;
Or your sad branches thicker join,
And into darksome shades combine,

Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid !

A SUPPLICATION

Awake, awake, my Lyre !
And tell thy silent master's humble tale
In sounds that may prevail ;

Sounds that gentle, thoughts inspire :
Though so exalted she
And I so lowly be,
Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

Hark ! how the strings awake :
And, though the moving hand approach not near.
Themselves with awful fear

A kind of numerous trembling make.
Now all thy forces try ;
Now all thy charms apply ;
Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak Lyre ! thy virtue sure
Is useless here, since thou art only found
To cure, but not to wound,

And she to wound, but not to cure.
Too weak too wilt thou prove
My passion to remove ;
Physic to other ills, thou'rt nourishment to love.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 179

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre !
For thou canst never tell my humble tale
In sounds that will prevail,

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire ;
All thy vain mirth lay by,
Bid thy strings silent lie,
Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre, and let thy master diei

EPITAPH OF THE LIVING AUTHOR

Here, stranger, in this humble nest,

Here Cowley sleeps ; here lies,
'Scaped all the toils that life molest,

And its superfluous joys.

Here, in no sordid poverty,

And no inglorious ease,
He braves the world, and can defy

Its frowns and flatteries.

The little earth he asks, survey :

Is he not dead, indeed ?
' Light lie that earth,' good stranger, pray,

' Nor thorn upon it breed !'

With flowers, fit emblem of his fame,

Compass your poet round ;
With flowers of every fragrant name,

Be his warm ashes crowned !

JOHN MILTON
1608-1674

JOHN MILTON was born in Bread Street, London, between six
and seven o'clock in the morning of the gth of December, A.D.
1608. He was the elder son of John Milton, a scrivener. The
poet's grandfather, also named John, was an under-ranger or
keeper of the forest of Shotover, near Halton, in Oxfordshire.
According to Mr. Wood, an authority who is also quoted by Dr.
Newton, the family came from Milton, a place near Halton and
Thame, where it flourished for several years, till the estate was
sequestered, one of the family having taken the unfortunate
side in the civil wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster.
The poet's father had ' a taste for the politer arts,' and was
especially skilled in music, in which he was not only a fine per-
former, but is also celebrated for several pieces of his composi-
tion. He was by all accounts a very worthy man, and his wife,
Sarah Caston, a Welsh lady, the poet's mother, was a woman of
incomparable virtue and goodness.

12 — 2

i8o A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

From an early age their son John showed unmistakable signs
of very exceptional genius. In consequence of this, his parents
spared neither pains nor money in the matter of providing him
with the best possible education, which was afforded partly by
private tutors, and eventually at a public school — St. Paul's.
It appears from the fourth of his Latin elegies, and from the
first and fourth of his epistles, that Mr. Thomas Young, who
was afterwards pastor of the company of English merchants
residing at Hamburg, was one of his private tutors. The Master
of St. Paul's School during Milton's time there was Mr. Gill, to
whose son the poet seems to have been greatly attached, as is
evidenced by the fact that to him some of the aforementioned
epistles are addressed. So great was the boy's love of learning,
and so strong his ambition, that from the age of twelve he was
accustomed to pursue his studies until midnight. To this he
himself attributes the first weakening cf his eyesight, which
eventually culminated in total blindness.

In the seventeenth year of his age he was sent to Christ's
College, Cambridge, being already a very good classical scholar,
and master of several languages. His tutor was Mr. William
Chappel, afterwards Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and
Bishop of Cork and Ross. He was more than seven years at
the University, graduating B.A. in 1629, and M.A. ir> 1632.
Dr. Newton dwells upon the fact that, ' though the merits of
both our Universities are perhaps equally great, and though
poetical exercises are rather more encouraged at Oxford, yet
most of our greatest poets have been bred at Cambridge, as
Spenser, Cowley, Waller, Dryden, Prior, not to mention any
of the lesser ones, when there is a greater than all, Milton.'
Before going to the University, Milton had given evidence of
his poetical genius, and during his student years he seized upon
many opportunities for turning this talent to account. Many
of his academic exercises are preserved amongst his other
works, and give evidence of his having possessed even then a
capacity very far above his years. Besides his weakening
eyesight, which some historians say he inherited from his
mother to begin with, he was subject to headaches, which
nevertheless did not deter him from assimilating vast stores of
learning.

WThile yet a schoolboy, the future poet could write Latin and

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 181

Greek, either in prose or verse, and he also knew something of
Hebrew. His reading had embraced the poems of Spenser and
Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas. Amongst his boyish
essays in verse were poetical paraphrases of the ii4th and I36th
Psalms.

It is said that during his course at Christ's College, Cambridge,
a quarrel of some sort took place between the young poet and
his tutor, and that the former had, in consequence, to leave his
college for awhile. Though it has been maintained by some
authorities that Milton never left his college at all, yet Dr.
Johnson exaggerates the incident so far as to state that he was
rusticated, and on the same page insinuates that he was flogged.
Both these statements are, however, very generally discredited,
the fact that the rod was not yet abolished as a means of cor-
rection from the Universities not being looked upon as sufficient
evidence that Milton was subjected to the ignominy of its appli-
cation. It is a still greater presumption to maintain, as some
do, that he was the last student of a University to be thus dealt
with. At this time his face was distinguished by a delicate beauty
of complexion and outline which caused some of his fellow-
students to nickname him ' The Lady of the College.'

Milton left his Alma Mater in 1632, and proceeded to his
father's country house at Horton. The scrivener had, by
careful attention to business, by this time amassed a consider-
able fortune, and could live in ease and comfort in his rural
home. There the poet spent five calm and happy years, bring-
ing to maturity that marvellous talent for poetic composition
which placed him so far above any of his contemporaries, and
in the front rank of the poets of all time. Up to then his greatest
essay had been the Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity,
written in his twentj'-first year. Its place is acknowledged to
be ' among the finest specimens of lyrical poetry that any age
or nation has produced.' The hymn contains twenty-seven
verses, of which the following may serve as specimens :

But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of light

His reign of peace upon the earth began :
The winds with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,

Whisp'ring new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

i82 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The stars with deep amaze
Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence ;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.

And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,

The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame

The new-enlightened world no more should need ;
He saw a greater sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burning axle-tree could bear.

The shepherds on the lawn,
Or e'er the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row ;
Full little thought they then,
That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below ;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took :
The air such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heav'nly close.

*****
But see the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest,

Time is our tedious song should here have end ng :
Heav'n's youngest teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending
And all about the courtly stable
Bright harness' d Angels sit in order serviceable.

At an even earlier age he had given proof of his poetic genius
by some paraphrases of the Psalms of David, and more par-
ticularly by his poem On the Death of a Fair Infant,'1 which
was written in his seventeenth year, and begins :

O fairest flow'r, no sooner blown but blasted,

Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,
Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst out-lasted
Bleak Winter's force that made thy blossom dry ;
For he being amorous on that lovely dye

That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss,
But kill'd, alas ! and then bewail' d his fatal bliss.

1 A niece of the poet's, daughter of his only sister.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 183

A College Exercise, written at the age of eighteen, is also
worthy of notice. We will quote a portion of it :

Hail, native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
Half-unpronounc'd, slide through my infant lips :

*****
I have some naked thoughts that rove about,
And loudly knock to have their passage out ;
And, weary of their place, do only stay
Till thou hast deck'd them in thy best array.

During his five ye'ars at Horton, which seem to have been the
happiest period of the poet's life, he wrote Arcades, the masque
of Comus, the elegy on his friend King, entitled Lycidas, and,
probably, L' Allegro and // Penseroso.

An eloquent description of Milton's appearance at this time
is given thus by Mr. Shaw : ' He was at this time eminently
beautiful in person, though of a stature scarcely attaining the
middle size ; but he relates with pride that he was remarkable
for his bodily activity and his address in the use of the sword.
During the whole of his life, indeed, the appearance of the poet
was noble, almost ideal ; his face gradually exchanged a childish,
seraphic beauty for the lofty expression of sorrow and sublimity
which it bore in his blindness and old age. When young he was
a type of his own angels, when old of a prophet, a patriot, and
a saint.'

The death of his mother, which took place in 1637, dispelled
much of the happiness which had endeared Horton to the poet,
and soon afterwards, in 1638, he started upon a long Continental
tour. During his fifteen months' absence from England he
visited many of the chief places of interest in Italy and France.
What he saw was perhaps less interesting and gratifying to his
great mind than the great men of other nationalities with whom
he was fortunate enough to come in contact. Amongst these
were the Marquis of Villa, friend and biographer of Tasso, whom
he met at Naples ; Galileo, old and blind, whom he visited at
Florence ; and Hugo Grotius, the great Dutchman, whom he
encountered in Paris. At Rome he heard the songs of Leonora
Baroni. This period of travel was the finishing of a perfect
education. The memory of the great Puritan poet was stored
at this time with a wealth of classic thoughts and images which
gave much of its vivid colouring to his later works. The influ-

i84 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

ence of his Continental experience is shown in his Italian Sonnets.
' It was at Florence/ says Dr. Collier, in this connection, ' that
the fair-cheeked Englishman met a beauty of Bologna, whose
black eyes subdued his heart, and whose voice completed the
conquest by binding it in silver chains — chains which it cost him
a pang to break before he could tear himself away. After visit-
ing Venice and Geneva, among other places, he returned by way
of France to England. Amid all the license and -vice of Con-
tinental life, as it then was, he passed pure and unstained,
returning with the bloom of his young religious feelings un-
faded, like the flush of English manhood on his cheek.'

It cannot be said with certainty when Milton's religious views
began to lean towards Puritanism or Presbyterianism. Lycidas
betrays some signs of this tendency, but the same cannot be
said of all his minor works, some of which go so far as to give
expression to sentiments with which Presbyterian views are
scarcely compatible. It is known that his parents wished him
to take Holy Orders, but he himself was decidedly averse to
that idea, and for a time contemplated the law as a profession.
But on his return from the Continent he took to teaching, and
became tutor to John and Edward Philips, his sister's sons.

Johnson sneers at him for this, as ' a man who hastens home
because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and,
when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism
in a private boarding-school.' But the poet himself considered
that he was helping on the cause of his country in an effectual
way on the principle kid down in the old saying :

Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword.

He says of himself : ' I avoided the toil and danger of a military
life, only to render my country assistance more useful, and not
less to my own peril.' He considered that education is one of
the greatest causes of prosperity and regeneration in nations.

In 1643 he married Mary Powell, the daughter of Mr. Richard
Powell, a Justice of the Peace, of Foresthill, near Shotover, in
Oxfordshire. The marriage proved unhappy at first. About
a month after the union had taken place, she accepted an invita-
tion from her relations to spend the summer months with them,
and promised to return at Michaelmas. The appointed time

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 185

came and went, but she did not appear. Milton wrote to her,
but received no answer. The reason for this strange conduct
is not known, but it so annoyed her husband that he vowed he
would never receive her again, and wrote his celebrated Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce by way of giving vent to his outraged
feelings. She eventually returned, however, and they were
reconciled, after a separation of three years. In the meantime
he had actually begun to make advances to another lady, but
the reconciliation was wonderfully complete under all the cir-
cumstanoes, and the reunited couple lived very happily together.
Milton's treatise on Divorce had roused the resentment of the
Presbyterian clergy, a fact which led, with other causes, to his
separating himself from that party. When the party of the
King was totally ruined, the poet very generously received his
wife's relations into his home, and afforded them a protection
which they were far from deserving at his hands.

In 1649, after the death of the King, he was appointed Latin
Secretary to the Council of State. While holding this office his
eyesight, which had long been declining in strength, completely
failed. Mary, his wife, died in 1652, leaving him with three
daughters, only one of whom — Deborah, the youngest — was a
comfort and help to him. Touching stories are told of the way
in which the blind poet dictated his verses to her, while she wrote
them down, often at untimely hours. In 1658 he married Cathe-
rine, daughter of Captain Woodcock. She is said to have been
the best-loved and most amiable of the poet's three wives, but
she died within a year of the marriage. He wrote a Sonnet in
her honour. In the year 1663 he married Elizabeth Minshul,
who proved a most exemplary wife, and a protection from the
rapacity of his daughters, who stole his trinkets and sold his
books. During the latter years of his life he composed Paradise
Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.

The restoration of Charles II. brought to an end the trouble
which followed the death of Oliver Cromwell, but it also brought
about the poet's ' evil days.' The triumphant Royalists were
not in a mood to be gracious to the regicide defender of the late
King's execution, or to the Commonwealth Latin Secretary.
But Milton had been merciful in the day of his ascendancy, and
the recollection of this may possibly have been the saving of
his life. Though compelled to conceal himself for a time, he

i86 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

escaped ultimately with no other penalty than the loss of his
office and a slight injury to his remaining fortune. The great
poet was attacked by gout in the closing years of his life, and
died in 1674, a monument being erected to his memory in West-
minster Abbey in 1737. His body, however, lies buried in the
chancel of the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

It must not be supposed that the transcendent genius of Milton
was realized by the age in which he lived and wrote. Dr. Newton
tells the following pitiful tale of the original price paid for
Paradise Lost : ' Though Milton received not above teji pounds
at two different payments for the copy of Paradise Lost, yet
Mr. Hoyle, author of the treatise on the Game of Whist, after
having disposed of all the first impressions, sold the copy to
the bookseller, as I have been informed, for two hundred
guineas.'

Milton was not unconscious of his own genius, as is shown by
his description of the high ideals which he set before himself, and
felt that he was capable of accomplishing. He tells us that he
considered labour and study to be his portion in this life, in order
that he ' might perhaps leave something so written in after-
times as they should not willingly let it die ... that what the
greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy,
and those Hebrews of old, did for their country, I, in my propor-
tion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for
mine.' Milton's minor poems would have been sufficient in
themselves, without the aid of Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained, to proclaim their author a poet of the very first rank,
and a worthy successor of the brilliant constellation of geniuses
which had adorned the pages of English song before his day.
Com-us might be said to be unique in its character were it not for
its close resemblance to the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher. Of
these two poems, Milton's Comus has the higher moral inspira-
tion, and as a literar}? composition is the more exact and elabo-
rate. How exquisite is the Lady's song :

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen

Within thy aery shell,
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale,

Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well ;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair

That likest thy Narcissus are ?

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 187

O, if thou have
Hid them in some flow'ry cave,

Tell me but where,

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere !
So may'st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies.

A period of twenty-one years elapsed between the issue of his
minor poems, in 1645, and the publication of Paradise Lost.
This great masterpiece appeared, in ten books, in 1667. Para-
dise Regained and Samson Agonistes were published in 1671.
Paradise Lost may be fairly called the greatest of epic poems,
superior not only to anything of the kind in the English language,
but surpassing even the epics of Homer and Virgil. Dr. Craik
does not hesitate to say that ' the First Book of this poem is
probably the most splendid and perfect of human compositions
— the one, that is to say, which unites these two qualities (rich-
ness and beauty) in the highest degree ; and the Fourth is as
unsurpassed for grace and luxuriance as that is for magnificence
of imagination.'

As a writer of blank verse, Milton stands absolutely alone, no
other writer of that form of poetry having approached within
measurable distance of the excellence which his displays in every
line. The greatest of critics must feel a certain awe in attempt-
ing to appraise Paradise Lost; indeed, the best qualified have
admitted a certain consciousness that they were stepping in
where angels would almost fear to tread. The theme of this
poem is the noblest and grandest that any poet ever chose. It
is not too much to say that to appreciate it fully is beyond the
average mind. Imagination, assimilation, imitation, all these
powers are pressed into the service of the master spirit. His
capacity for appropriating the thoughts and images of those who
preceded him in the field of literature is no less marvellous than
is his power of so clothing them in new beauties of diction as to
make them absolutely his own. Concerning this, which must
always be considered his masterpiece, the following words of
Mr. Spalding are eloquent, and none too strong :

' If we say that the theme is managed with a skill almost un-
equalled, the plan laid down and executed with extraordinary
exactness of art, we make assertions which are due to the poet,
but on the correctness of which few of his readers are qualified
to judge. Like other great works, and in a higher degree than

i88 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

most, the poem is oftenest studied and estimated by piecemeal
only. Though it be so taken, and though its unbroken and
weighty solemnity should at length have caused weariness, it
cannot but have left a vivid impression on all minds not quite
unsusceptible of fine influences. The stately march of its dic-
tion ; the organ-peal with which its versification rolls on ; the
continual overflowing, especially in the earlier books, of beautiful
illustrations from nature or art ; the clearly and brightly coloured
pictures of human happiness and innocence ; the melancholy
grandeur with which angelic natures are clothed in their fall—
these are features, some or all of which must be delightful to
most of us, and which give to the mind images and feelings not
easily or soon effaced. If the poet has sometimes aimed at
describing scenes over which should have been cast the veil
of reverential silence, we should remember that this occurs but
rarely. If other scenes and figures of a supernatural kind are
invested with a costume which may seem to us unduly corporeal
even for the poetic inventor, we should pause to recollect that
the task thus attempted is one in, which perfect success is un-
attainable ; and we shall ourselves, unless our fancy is cold
indeed, be awed and dazzled, whether we will or not, by many
of those very 'pictures.'

The composition of this great work was the abiding solace of
those dark years which followed the Restoration, and the con-
sequent obscurity of the life of the ex-Latin Secretary. The
story is told that Thomas Ellwood, a young Quaker, used to
come very frequently in the afternoons and read Latin to the
blind poet. It was this friend who secured for him the cottage
at Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire, where the Miltons found a
haven of safety from the great Plague that visited London in
1665. During a visit which the Quaker, then a tutor in a rich
family in the neighbourhood, paid to the poet after he had
settled down in the cottage, Milton called for a manuscript, and
handed it to Ellwood. It was the poem of Paradise Lost,
recently finished. Ellwood read it through, and, in returning
it to the poet, said : ' Thou hast said much here of Paradise
Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found ?' This
question resulted in the composition of the companion epic,
Paradise Regained. This is a shorter work than Paradise Lost,
and consists of four books. Though it was preferred by Milton

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 189

himself to the previous work, it is certainly inferior both in
interest and style. It describes the triumph of our Lord over
the temptations of Satan, in a magnetic and graphic manner, and
would have made the name of Milton great had it been his only
claim to the title of poet.

Dr. Craik says : ' It is natural, in comparing, or contrasting,
Milton's Paradise Lost with his Paradise Regained, to think of
the two great Homeric epics : the Iliad commonly believed by
antiquity to have proceeded from the inspired poet in the vigour
and glow of his manhood or middle age, the Odyssey to reflect
the milder radiance of his imagination in the afternoon or even-
ing of his life. It has been common accordingly to apply to the
case of the English poet also the famous similitude of Longinus,
and to say that in Paradise Regained we have the Sun on his
descent, the same indeed as ever in majesty (TO //.eyeflos), but
deprived of his overpowering ardour (<5t'xa T^S o-^oS/oo-r^Tvs). Some
have gone further, not claiming for the Paradise Regained the
honour of being sunshine at all, but only holding it worthy of
being applauded in the spirit and after the fashion in which
Pope has eulogized the gracious though not dazzling qualities
of his friend, Martha Blount :

So, when the sun's broad beam has tired the sight,
All mild ascends the Moon's more sober light ;
Serene in virgin modesty she shines,
And unobserved the glaring orb declines.

Milton himself says, ' Time serves not now, and, perhaps I
might seem too profuse, to give any certain account of what
the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath
liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest
attempting ; whether that epic form, whereof the two poems of
Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse,
and the book of Job a brief, model.' Upon this passage and
its context Mr. Charles Dunster bases a theory to the effect
that Milton designed his Paradise Regained to be an example of
the brief epic, as contrasted with the great epic, such as those
of Homer and Virgil, setting before himself the book of Job
as a model of the former style of poem.1

But the difference between the two works is easily explainable
by the fact that the idea of the one was inspired by the Old

1 Paradise Regained, with notes, by Charles Dunster, M.A., 1795, p. 2.

i go A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Testament and that of the other by the New. As such they
have naturally much in common, but as naturally many differ-
ences, just as the New Testament itself is an embodiment of the
fact that ' the former things are passed away.' The one is as
distinctively Hebrew as the other is distinctively Christian. The
fact that the poet preferred Paradise Regained to the greater epic
is not easily accounted for, but it has been suggested that this is
in keeping with his habit of being best pleased always with what
he had most recently produced, a feeling which has been shared
by many other writers.

Lord Macaulay pays the following eloquent tribute to the
nobility of Milton's character :

' Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to
clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were
now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and the public. It
was a loathsome herd — which could be compared to nothing so
fitly as the rabble of Comus ; grotesque monsters, half-bestial,
half-human, dropping with wine, and reeling in obscene dances.
Amidst these his muse was placed, like the Chaste Lady in the
masque, lofty, spotless, and serene — to be chattered at, and
pointed at, by the whole rabble of satyrs and goblins. If ever
despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might
have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind
overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor-
age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disap-
pointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power
to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits did not
seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His
temper was serious, perhaps stern ; but it was a temper which
no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was
when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels
in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary
distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes — such it continued
to be, when, after having experienced every calamity which is
incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he
retired to his hovel to die.'1

It was in this hovel that John Milton, who ranks in history
with Homer, Virgil, and Dante as an epic poet, died one month
before the completion of his sixty-sixth year. It was on Sunday,
1 Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii., p. 323.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 191

the 8th of November, 1674, that the end came. Beside the dust
of his father, in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, his worn-out
body was laid to rest.

FROM 1U ALLEGRO'

THE MAN OF MIRTH

Hence, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus 1 and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy !
Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings ;

There under ebon shades and low-brow' d rocks.
As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou goddess fair and free.
In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth ;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces2 more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore.

*****

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles.
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek ;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.

FROM 1IL PENSEROSO'

'THE MELANCHOLY MAN

Hence, vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly, without father bred !
How little you bestead,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys !
Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeams ;
Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy.
Hail, divinest Melancholy !
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue.

1 Erebus, not Cerberus, was the legitimate husband of
(T. Warton). Milton makes his own parentage for Melancholy.

2 Meat and Drink, the two sisters of Mirth. — WARBURTON.

Night

1 92 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole1 of Cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes :
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast :
And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing :
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.

FROM 'PARADISE LOST'

ADDRESS TO LIGHT

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first-born,
Or of th' Eternal co-eternal beam,
May I express thee unblam'd ? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light,
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream.
Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before the Sun,
Before the Heav'ns thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep.
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escap'd the Stygian pool, though long detain' d
In that obscure sojourn, while, in my flight,
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to th' Orphean lyre,
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night ;
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare : thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp ; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn ;
So thick a drop serene'^ hath quench' d their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander, where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song ; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks3 beneath,

1 The stole was ' a veil which covered the head and shoulders, worn only
by such Roman matrons as were distinguished for their modesty.'

2 Gutta Serena. 3 Kedron and Siloam.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 193

That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit : nor sometimes forget
Those other two, equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris,1 and blind Ma^onides,2
And Tiresias,3 and Phineus,4 prophets old :
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers ; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note.

EVENING IN PARADISE ^

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
Silence accompauied ; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung ;
Silence was pleas'd : now glow'd the firmament
With living sapphires : Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

(' I know of nothing parallel or comparable to this passage to be found
among all the treasures of ancient or modern poetry.' — NEWTON.)

TEMPERANCE

Well observe

The rule of Not too much ; by temperance taught,
In what thou eat'st and drink'st ; seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight ;
Till many, years over thy head return ;
So may'st thou live ; till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease
Gather'd, not harshly pluck'd ; for death mature.
This is Old Age ; but then, thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To wither'd, weak, and gray ; thy senses then,
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego,
To what thou hast ; and, for the air of youth.
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The balm of life.

1 A Thracian poet, struck blind by the Muses for presumption in rivalling
them.

2 An appellation of Homer, from Maeonia, one of the places that laid
claim to the honour of his birth.

3 A celebrated Theban prophet.

4 A King of Thrace or Bithynia, struck blind for prying into futurity.

194 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'PARADISE REGAINED'

ATHENS

Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west, behold
Where on the ^Egean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil, —
Athens, the eye of Greece,1 mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,2
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird3
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long ;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing ; there Hissus4 rolls
His whisp'ring stream : within the walls, then view
The schools of ancient sages ; his,5 who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world ;
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next :
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measur'd verse,
/Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes ;
And his, who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes,6 thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challeng'd for his own :
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life ;
High actions and high passions best describing :
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne :
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates : see there his tenement,
Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd
Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued fort!
Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools
Of academics old and new 7 with those

1 Sparta, and Athens were called the eyes of Greece.
' 2 The school of Plato.

3 The nightingale. Philomela, who was changed into this bird, was
the daughter of Pandion, King of Athens.

4 A stream near Athens.

5 Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetic sect, was Alexander's tutor.

6 Homer was alleged to have been born on the banks of the river Meles,
near Smyrna.

7 Socrates was the instructor of Plato, the founder of the Academic
School. Quinctilian calls him fans philosophorum.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 195

Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.
These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight ;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire join'd.

A SONNET

ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF
TWENTY-THREE

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen On his wing my three-and-twentieth year !
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom show'th.

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arriv'd so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.

Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-master's eye.

SAMUEL BUTLER

1612-1680

SAMUEL BUTLER is unquestionably the greatest literary repre-
sentative of the Cavaliers, as Milton is the greatest of the Puri-
tans. These two names are very fitly coupled together. Though
the character of their respective works is vastly different, each
was possessed of an amount of general learning seldom vouch-
safed to an individual mind. Butler became famous after the
restoration of Charles II., when that event had thrown the
Puritans into the shade. He had seen the bloody drama of the
Revolution played out. During that chequered period of history
he had been brought into very close contact with both Round-
heads and Cavaliers. He was fifty-one years of age when his'
burlesque poem of Hudibras, the greatest of its kind in the
English language, was given to the world, and ' cast even deeper
ridicule on the men of the steeple-hat and the sad-coloured dress
than all the studied mockeries of a plumed and ringleted court
could do.'

Samuel Butler was of humble origin. His father was a poor

13-— 2

196 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

but respectable farmer who cultivated a few acres of land in the
parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire. The future poet first
saw the light in 1612. His career is wrapt in much obscurity,
but it is known that his first schooling was obtained at Worcester
Free School. Some accounts state that he resided for awhile at
Cambridge, though there is no existing proof that he ever
matriculated at that or any other University. In his early man-
hood he resided for some years at Earl's Croombe, acting as clerk
to a Justice of the Peace named Jeffreys, or Jeffries. Doubtless
he used his opportunities during this period to the best advan-
tage, and laid up a store of legal knowledge. Later on he was
fortunate enough to obtain admission to the household — though
in what capacity history does not clearly state — of the Countess
of Kent. It is thought that this appointment, whatever its
nature may have been, was largely due to the influence of Selden,
who managed the household of this noble lady, and is said by some
to have been secretly married to her. In the splendid library
of the Countess's mansion Butler found opportunities of improving
his mind, which he did not fail to turn to the best possible account.
During this period of his life also he enjoyed social intercourse
with a class of people which included many accomplished and
learned men and women. His life as a whole was not a happy
one, and this was certainly one of the few bright spots in it.

We find him next acting in the capacity of tutor or clerk in the •
household of Sir Samuel Luke, a very wealthy and powerful
republican Member of Parliament. Sir Samuel was a Presby-
terian and a Puritan, holding the office of Scout-master under
Cromwell. Though the atmosphere of this household must have
been by no means congenial to Butler's tastes, yet it was amidst
such surroundings that he conceived the ideas which he sub-
sequently embodied in his inimitable satire.

Another break occurs in the known history of the poet, and
then he reappears as Secretary to Lord Carbury, the President
of Wales, in which capacity he held the office qf Steward of Lud-
low Castle, where the Comus of Milton had been presented before
Lord Bridgewater. But the poet did not hold this post for long.
About this time he married a lady with some private means, but
the money was lost soon afterwards through the failure of the
securities, and Butler was as poor as — or poorer than — before.
It was at this juncture that he published the first part of Hudi-

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 197

bras. After its appearance, he may indeed be said to have awaked
and found himself famous, but little more than that. He made
no money to speak of by the work, though the King himself
carried a copy of it about with him, and admired it, quoting it
freely in conversation with his friends. Though the author of the
most popular book of the time, Samuel Butler died in extreme
poverty in a wretched tenement in Rose Street, Covent Garden,
in the year 1680, a dejected and disappointed man.

Hudibras is acknowledged by the best critics to be the greatest
burlesque poem in the English language, and on it rests Butler's
chief claim to immortality. It is a satire on the absurdities and
vices of the Presbyterians and Independents, who were the two
dominant sects of the fanatic or republican party. The poem is
written in the short tetrameter line, and teems throughout with
flashes of wit and drollery which are quite unrivalled.

The idea of the poem is clearly borrowed from Cervantes' Don
Quixote, though there is no actual resemblance between the
two works. Butler's satire is thoroughly English in conception,
style, and treatment from beginning to end. It is unfinished,
and its plan is desultory, a fact which is easily accounted for by
the spaces of time which elapsed between the publication of the
first and second and the second and third parts. Sir Hudibras,
a Presbyterian knight (of whom Sir Samuel Luke is supposed to
have been the prototype), and his clerk, Squire Ralpho, go forth
to search for adventures in much the same way as did Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza. Their aim is to put a stop to the
amusements of the common people, against whom the Rump
Parliament had passed many oppressive acts. The Puritan
manners, the quarrels, loves, and misadventures of master and
man are spread in a highly ludicrous manner over nine cantos.
The style of versification, and the name of the hero, are taken
from the old Anglo-Norman Trouvere poets, and the legends of
the Round Table.

Mr. Shaw concludes a powerful dissertation on Hudibras
with the following eulogistic words: The poem is crowded
with allusions to particular persons and events of the Civil
War and the Commonwealth; and consequently its merits
can be fully appreciated only by those who are acquainted
with the minute history of the epoch, for which reason Butler
is eminently one of those authors who require to be studied

198 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

with a commentary ; yet the mere ordinary reader, though
many delicate strokes will escape him, may gather from
Hudibras a rich harvest of wisdom and of wit. However
specific be the direction of much of the satire, a very large pro-
portion will always be applicable as long as there exist in the world
hypocritical pretenders to sanctity, and quacks in politics or
learning. Many of the scenes and conversation are universal
portraitures : as, for example, the consultation with the lawyer,
the dialogues on love and marriage with the lady, the scenes with
Sidrophel, and a multitude of others. From Butler's writings
alone there would be no difficulty in drawing abundant illustra-
tions of all the varieties of wit enumerated in Barrow's famous
enumeration : the " pat allusion to a known story, the seasonable
application of a trivial saying ; the playing in words and phrases,
taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity
of their sound. Sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous
expression ; sometimes it lurks under an old similitude ; some-
times it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish
reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly
retorting an objection ; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme
of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling
metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute
nonsense ; sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a pre-
sumptuous bluntness, giveth it being ; sometimes it riseth only
from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from a
crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose."

Is has been truly said that the perusal of Hudibras is diet so
solid, that it should be taken by little at a time. It is a work
whose epigrammatic practical wisdom has woven itself into the

phraseology of the language.

•

SIR HUDIBRAS AND HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS

When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why,
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears ;

* * * * *

When gospel-trumpeter, surrounded
With long-eared rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick ;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a colonelling.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 199

A wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him Mirror of Knighthood ;
That never bowed his stubborn knee
To anything but Chivalry ;
Nor put up blow but that which laid
Right worshipful on shoulder-blade :
Chief of domestic knights and errant,
Either for cartel or for warrant,
Great on the bench, great in the saddle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle ;l
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styled of war as well as peace.
(So some rats, of amphibious nature,
Are either for the land or water.)
But here our authors make a doubt.
Whether he were more wise or stout ;
Some hold the one and some the other ;
But howso'er thy make a pother,
The difference was so small, his brain
Outweighed his rage but half a grain ;
Which made some take him for a tool
That knaves do work with, called a fool.

*****

We grant, although he had much wit,
He was very shy of using it ;
As being loth to wear it out,
And therefore bore it not about,
Unless on holidays or so,
As men their best apparel do.

Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak,
That Latin was no more difficile
Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle :
Being rich in both, he never scanted
His bounty unto such as wanted ;
But much of either would afford
To many that had not one word.

*****

He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic ;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixth south and south-west side :
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute ;
He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man's no horse ;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl ;
A calf, an alderman ; a goose, a justice ;
And rooks, committee-men and trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination.
All this by syllogism, true
In mood and figure, lie would do.
For rhetoric — he could not ope
His mouth but out there flew a trope.

1 That is, to beat, or cudgel.

200 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And when he happened to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H'had hard words ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by ;
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talked like other folk ;
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
But, when he pleased to show' t, -his speech
In loftiness of sound was rich ;
A Babylonish1 dialect,
Which learned pedants much affect.
It was a parti-coloured dress
Of patched and piebald languages ;
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
« As fustian heretofore on satin.

It had an odd promiscuous tone,

Like if he had talked three parts in one ;

Which made some think, when he did gabble,

Th' had heard three labourers of Babel,

Or Cerberus himself pronounce

A leash of languages at once.

FROM THE • GENUINE REMAINS.' "

Who would believe that wicked earth,
Where nature only brings us forth
To be found guilty and forgiven,
Should be a nursery for heaven ;
When all we can expect to do
Will not pay half the debt we owe,
And yet more desperately dare,
As if that wretched trifle were
Too much for the eternal powers,
Our great and mighty creditors,
Not only slight what they enjoin,
But pay it in adulterate coin ?
We only in their mercy trust,
To be more wicked and unjust :
All our devotions, vows, and prayers,
Are our own interest, not theirs :
Our offerings when we come t' adore,
But begging presents, nothing more :
The purest business of our zeal
Is but to err by meaning wele,
And make that meaning do more harm
Than our worst deeds that are less warm
For the most wretched and perverse
Doth not believe himself he errs.

1 Babylonish dresses were distinguished by variety and glitter of
rnaments.

2 Genuine Remains, in verse and prose, were published by Mr. Thyer,
i 1759, from manuscripts left in possession of Mr. Longueville, Butler's

-ifinrl

in
friend.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 201

JOHN DRYDEN

Circa 1631 ^1700

' OF the great poet whose life I am now about to delineate,' says
Dr. Johnson at the beginning of his exhaustive sketch, ' the
curiosity which his reputation must excite will require a display
more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, how-
ever they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten : and
nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention
and uncertain tradition have supplied.'

From such sources of information may be gathered the fol-
lowing details of the life and writings of one who has been de-
scribed as ' the literary chief of the whole interval between Crom-
well and Queen Anne.'

John Dry den was born probably at Aldwincle, in Northampton-
shire, on the gth of August, 1631. His father was Erasmus
Dryden, of Tichmersh, and his grandfather Sir Erasmus Dryden,
Bart., of Canons Ashby. Going still further back, his family is
said to have originally sprung from the county of Huntingdon.

Derrick tells us that he was brought up as an Anabaptist,
and inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year.
' For either of these particulars no authority is given. Such a
fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty which
seems always to have oppressed him ; or, if he had wasted it, to
have made him ashamed of publishing his necessities. But
though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his
life with a scrutiny sufficiently malicious, I do not remember
that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was
indeed sometimes reproached for his first religion. I am there-
fore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly
true, and partly erroneous.'

Erasmus Dryden had fourteen children, of whom John was
the eldest. The future poet was placed at Westminster School,
under the care of the celebrated Dr. Busby, where he was educated
as one of the King's scholars. In 1650 he was fortunate enough
to win a Westminster scholarship at Cambridge, and accordingly
proceeded to Trinity College, where he graduated B.A. in 1653.

While at school, he wrote a poem on the death of Lord Hastings,

1 The inscription on his monument in Westminster Abbey is ' Natus
1632. Mortuus Maij i, 1700.'

202 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

who had fallen a victim to small-pox. Referring to the marks
which that disorder produces on the human frame, the boy-poet
says :

No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corps might seem a constellation.

But his earliest poem of any particular merit consisted of a set
of ' heroic stanzas ' on the death of Cromwell. So excellent are
these that one easily detects in them the promise of future great-
ness, which was so abundantly fulfilled in the poet's subsequent
writings. The following verses are examples of this early effort :

His grandeur he deriv'd from Heaven alone,
For he was great ere fortune made him so ;

And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.

Nor was he like those stars that only shine
When to pale mariners they storms portend ;

He had his calmer influence, and his mien
Did love and majesty together blend.

On the restoration of the monarchy, Dryden, ' like the other
panegyrists of usurpation,' changed his views, and broke with the
Puritans. He published Astrcea Redux, ' a poem on the happy
restoration and return of his most sacred Majesty King Charles
the Second/ and another in praise of the Lord Chancellor. Thence-
forth he attached himself to the Royalist party, it may have been
from motives of ambition. However that may be, it is certain
that the spirit of the Royalists was an atmosphere far more con-
genial to his own character than ever that of Puritanism could have
been. He also wrote a Panegyric on the Coronation at this period.
These works were quite as remarkable for their political servility
as for their poetical merits. He has been blamed with consider-
able harshness for his change of politics, but we may safely ac-
credit him with feeling, as was generally felt at the time, that ' a
load of fear had rolled away when Charles came back from exile
to fill his father's throne.' The taste and tendencies of the age of
this monarch, moreover, gave a new tone to English literature,
and Dryden became the chief writer in whose works this new
feature was embodied. ' Dryden's veerings in religion, politics,
criticism, and taste, over his whole life, exhibit a mind owning,
with true poetical fidelity, the dominion of impulse. His scholar-
ship was various and undigested ; his opinions the product of
circumstances or passion ; his taste too often the reflection of his

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 203

interest or his prejudices ; and his religion, in his youth, that of
a mind borne about by every wind of doctrine. On this last sub-
ject he himself thus speaks in The Hind and Panther :

' " My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires,
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Follow'd false lights ; and, when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I. Such by nature still I am."

With all this, there is in Dryden's writings so much hearty earnest-
ness in whatever he asserts, such an English manliness in the
expression of apology or gratitude, that we cannot believe him to
have been one who coolly calculated how much inconsistency or
adulation was worth. For the latter he is not more to blame than
many of that age, whose honesty has been much less a subject
of question.'

One of the most conspicuous results of the Restoration was a
popular revival of the drama, but, unhappily, on the French
model. Dryden, now a Court poet, allowed his own natural bent
to be diverted from its course by the degenerate taste of the times
in which he lived. Though, like Milton, he had early conceived
the idea of a great epic poem on the doings of King Arthur and
his knights, he abandoned the project, and became a dramatist.
Upon his own confession, he wrote only one, All for Love, in
accordance with his own taste, all the others being creatures of
circumstances which did not tend to elevate their tone. The date
of his first play cannot be stated with positive certainty, but
Johnson thinks it may be fairly assumed that he began to write
for the stage in 1663, the thirty-second year of his age. His first
play was a comedy called The Wild Gallant. It met with such
severe criticism that he was compelled to recall it, and alter it
from its imperfect state to that in -which it may now be read, and
which is yet defective enough to justify the critics in condemning
it. This work was followed by The Rival Ladies and The Indian
Emperor, and a number of other tragedies and comedies which it
would be superfluous to mention in detail. They are almost
entirely forgotten, though many passages might be selected from
them which give full proof of the poetical genius of their author.
The Rival Ladies was dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, who was
himself a writer of rhyming tragedies, and, it is thought, the first
to introduce that class of drama which came into vogue soon
after the Restoration.

204 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

In the year 1663 the poet married Lady Elizabeth Howard,
but this alliance did not contribute to his happiness. A daughter
of the Earl of Berkshire, this lady was of a sour and querulous
disposition, and her unpleasant relationships with Dryden are
thought to be in no small measure accountable for his misogy-
nistic views, which find expression in his works from time to time.

It was in 1667 that he published Annus Mirabilis, or the Year
of Wonders, one of his greatest works. It is written in quatrains,
the ' peculiar four-lined stanza which Davenant had employed
in his poem of Gondibert,' a poem which Dryden thought to be the
most majestic in the English language. It is intended to com-
memorate the great calamities of the previous year, the Fire of
London, and the war with the Dutch. In its beauty and vigour
it gives abundant proof that its author was entitled to the honour
which was conferred on him by his appointment to the vacant
post of Laureate in 1670, on the death of Davenant, and the
salary of £200 which appertained to that office. Sir Walter Scott
thus speaks of Dryden's degeneracy as a Court poet :

And Dryden in immortal strain,

Had raised the table round again,

But that a ribald king and court

Bade him play on to make them sport,

The world defrauded of the high design,

Profaned the God-given strength and marr'd the lofty line.

In November, 1681, appeared the first part of Absalom and
Achitophel, which may be said to be the most extraordinary
political poem in this or any other language. Under the thin
disguise of Hebrew names, he portrays the characters of the chief
men of the two parties in the State, of course magnifying those
attached to the Court, while he overwhelms their opponents with
the most fearful invective, or lacerates them with poignant ridi-
cule. No matter what may be our opinion as to his fairness, we
cannot fail to admire the marvellous cleverness which the poet
displays. It may be that the likeness might be more faithful,
but there can be no two opinions as to the masterly execution of
the artist. So great was the success of the poem that Dryden —
' to whom, in spite of his affected contempt for the opinion of the
world, the incense of applause was as the breath of life ' — followed
it up with another satire entitled The Medal, in which he again
portrayed the character of Shaftesbury with a happy malice that
must have been as gall and wormwood to the original. The

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 205

Whig poets made answer to both attacks, though with less wit
than zeal. Shadwell and Little were the chief defenders of the
Whig cause. They lived to regret their advocacy. Dryden
again came to the contest with Mac Flecknoe, in which he con-
centrated on their unlucky heads, especially Shadwell's, the
wrath which would have been scorching even if diffused amongst
the whole crowd of confederates. The scathing criticisms were
couched in lines like these :

Others to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.

Shadwell was further chastised in a passage in the second part
of Absalom and Achitophel, ' the body of which was written with
considerable spirit by Nahum Tate.'

Abandoning satire for the nonce, Dryden now took up the
weapon of argument, and produced a long poem entitled Religio
Laid, in which he made a confession of his own creed, and made
a strong plea for the orthodoxy of the Church.

The death of King Charles, in 1685, seems to have been favour-
able to Dryden's circumstances, since in the reign of that monarch
the poet's pension had been ill paid. Amongst the crowd of
sycophants who hastened to sacrifice to the ' rising sun,' Dryden
distinguished himself by his Threnodia Augustalis, a gratulatory
poem of considerable merit. He also embraced the Roman faith.
' Much has been said to justify this change of profession, but the
best excuse that can be given is, that he who doubts the truth
of all religions, and is indifferent to religion itself, can be guilty
of no crime in assuming the most convenient.' The change was
rewarded by an additional grant of £100 a year, in return for
which he gave to the State and the world a long poem entitled
The Hind and Panther, in which the Roman Catholic Church is
typified by a milk-white hind, the Church of England as a
panther, and the various other religious bodies as wolves, bears,
boars, foxes, etc.

After the Revolution, Dryden was compelled to resign all his
pensions and places, and it was only by his own prudence that
his life was preserved. He again resorted to the drama for sub-
sistence, and in the four following years he produced Don Sebas-
tian, King Arthur, Amphitryon, Cleomenes, and Love Triumphant,
his last play, which was acted in 1692, with but little success.
Don Sebastian is the best of his dramatic works. -

206 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

From this period he produced nothing until, in 1697, he gave
to the world his great translation of Virgil's Mneid. Pope calls
this ' the most noble and spirited in any language.' Soon after-
wards the world was astonished by the appearance of Alexander's
Feast. A great deal of controversy has raged round this magni-
ficent ode, the difference of opinion being as regards the actual
time spent in its composition. There seems to be fairly conclu-
sive evidence that it was written in a single night. The unity of
the piece, the consecutiveness and close connection of the trains
of thought, and the fervency of spirit which animates the whole
work, lend themselves to this conclusion. His last work of any
consequence was a collection of Fables, modernizations of Chaucer,
to which he added a version of the first book of Homer, whom he
had some thought of translating.

Dryden's smaller pieces, comprising prologues, epilogues,
epitaphs, elegies, and lyrics, have been collected by Sir Walter
Scott, and published in his edition of the poet's works.

After a" long life of unremitting toil and anxiety, which was
embittered by pecuniary difficulties and literary feuds, he died, on
the ist of May, 1700, of mortification brought on by an inflamma-
tion in one of his toes. He breathed his last in an obscure lodging
in Gerard Street, London. His medical attendant had proposed
amputation, but the poet declined this remedy. He was sensible
almost to the last, and died professing his faith in the Roman '
Catholic Church. His body was embalmed, and lay in state in
the Physicians' Hall, where a funeral oration was pronounced over
his remains by Sir Samuel Garth, physician and poet, after which
they were conveyed to Westminster Abbey, preceded by a band
of music. He was buried between the graves of Chaucer and
Cowley. Some time after his decease the Duke of Buckingham
placed a simple pedestal near his grave, inscribed ' J. Dryden.'
The following epitaph by Pope was originally intended for his
tomb :

This Sheffield raised — the sacred dust below
Was Dryden once ; the rest, who does not know •?

This was afterwards discarded for the plain inscription mentioned
above. A bust by Scheemakers was subsequently added.

There are few poets of whose lives and works so much has been
written that is interesting and instructive. Johnson's biography
of Dryden will always be read with pleasure. Sir Walter Scott's

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 207

edition of his works, in sixteen volumes, is enriched with copious
notes and just critical observations ; and Campbell has displayed
his refined taste in the remarks he has made on the character of
Dry den's poetical compositions. Among his biographers, it
would be unjust to omit the name of Malone, who, in his edition
of the poet's works, has exhibited the deepest research and the
most indefatigable industry in narrating the many striking inci-
dents of his life and the history of the time in which he lived. As
a dramatist, a lyrical poet, a satirist, a translator, and a philo-
sopher, Dryden has been shown by all to be one of the most
eminent of our English classics.

Speaking of the writings of Dryden, and of his style as exempli-
fied, for instance, in the lines on the character of the Duke of
Buckingham, Mr. Chambers says : ' The difference between the
style of versification here exemplified, and that which flourished
in earlier times, cannot fail to be remarked. The poets ante-
cedent to the Commonwealth, especially Spenser, Shakespeare,
Drayton, and the dramatists of the reign of James I., uttered
sentiments, described characters, and painted external nature,
with a luxuriant negligence and freedom, occasionally giving way
to coarseness and conceit ; and though apparently unable at any
time to perceive when they were writing effectively or otherwise,
they were always easy, and frequently very happy. They
formed nothing like what is called a school of writers, for they had
hardly any rules to be acquired. The Commonwealth, with its
religious and political troubles, may be said to have put an end
to this class of poets. These who sprung up in the ensuing period
studied as their model the stately and regular versification that
prevailed in France, to which they were introduced by the ad-
herents of the Court, who had endured a long exile in that country.
This new method was introduced with the imposing character
of the style of civilized Europe, as regulated by the most authori-
tative rules of antiquity, while the old English manner, which
had no followers on the Continent, was regarded as something too
homely for polished society. Tenderness and fancy were now
exchanged for satire and sophistry ; lines, rugged, perhaps, but
sparkling with rich thought and melting with genuine feeling,
gave place to smooth, accurate, monotonous epic couplets, in
which the authors would have been ashamed to display any pro-
found sentiment or any idea of startling novelty. The very sub-

208 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

jects of poetry were different from what they had been. The new
order of writers, men of scholarly education and accustomed to
live in fashionable society, applied themselves to describe the
artificial world of manners, to flatter or satirize their contempo-
raries ; or, if they at times ventured upon anything connected
with rural nature, it was not till they had disguised it under a set
of cold, lifeless images borrowed from the pastorals of antiquity.
The nymphs and swains of this class of poets were like the nymphs
and swains of a masquerade, well-bred people dressed in good
clothes rather fancifully made. The former were Delias, or
Chloes, or Corinnas ; the latter Damons, or Strephons, or Cymons.
They might have the crook or the milk-pail in their hands, but they
had not human nature in their hearts, nor its language upon their
tongues. The most lively and poetical objects had to submit to
a colder kind of nomenclature at the hands of these poets. The
sun obtained the classic appellation of Phcebus. The flowers
could not be alluded to otherwise than as the offsprings of the
goddess Flora ; the north wind was personified under the doubly
freezing epithet of Boreas ; and a voyage could not be performed
unless by special favour of Neptune and his Tritons.'

VENI CREATOR

Creator Spirit ! by whose aid
The world's foundations first were laid,
Come, visit every pious mind ;
Come, pour thy joys on human kind ;
From sin and sorrow set us free,
And make thy temples worthy Thee.

O source of uncreated light,
The Father's promised Paraclete !
Thrice holy fount, thrice holy fire,
Our hearts with heavenly love inspire ;
Come, and thy sacred unction bring,
To sanctify us while we sing.

Plenteous of grace, descend from high.

Rich in thy sevenfold energy !

Thou strength of His Almighty hand,

Whose power does heaven and earth command ;

Proceeding Spirit, our defence,

Who dost the gifts of tongues dispense,

And crown'st thy gifts with eloquence !

Refine and purge our earthly parts ;
But, oh inflame and fire our hearts !
Our frailties help, our vice control,
Submit the senses to the soul ;
And when rebellious they are grown,
Then lay thine hand, and hold them down.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 209

Chase from our minds the eternal foe.
And peace, the fruit of love, bestow ;
And, lest our feet should step astray.
Protect and guide us in the way.
Make us eternal truths receive,
And practise all that we believe :
Give us thyself, that we may see
The Father, and the Son, by Thee.

Immortal honour, endless fame,

Attend the Almighty Father's name !

The Saviour Son be glorified,

Who for lost man's redemption died !

And equal adoration be,

Eternal Paraclete, to Thee.

FROM 'ALL FOR LOVE'

CLEOPATRA ON THE CYDNUS

ACT III., SCENE i

Her galley down the silver Cydnus rowed,

The tackling silk, the streamers waved with gold ;

The gentle winds were lodged in purple sails :

Her nymphs, like Nereides, round her couch were placed ;

Where she, another sea-born Venus, lay.

*****
She lay, and leant her cheek upon her hand,
And cast a look so languishingly sweet,
As if, secure of all beholders' hearts,
Neglecting, she could take them ; boys, like cupids,
Stood fanning, with their painted wings, the winds
That played about her face ; but if she smiled,
A darting glory seemed to blaze abroad,
That men's desiring eyes were never wearied,
But hung upon the object. To soft flutes
The silver oars kept time ; and while they played,
The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight,
And both to thought. 'Twas heaven, or somewhat more
For she so charmed all hearts, that gazing crowds
Stood panting on the shore, and wanted breath
To give their welcome voice.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST
AN ODE IN HONOUR OF ST. CECILIA'S DAY.1

'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won

By Philip's warlike son ;
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate

On his imperial throne :
His valiant peers were plac'd around ;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound,
(So should desert in arms be crown'd),

1 St. Cecilia's Day is observed on November 22. Her saintship was
acknowledged as early as the fifth century.

14

2io A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The lovely Thais, by his side,
Sate, like a blooming eastern bride,
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair !
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus, plac'd on high

Amid the tuneful quire,

With flying fingers touch'd the lyre :
The trembling notes ascend the sky,

And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above,
(Such is the power of mighty love
A dragon's fiery form belied the god,
Sublime on radiant spires he rode

When he to fair Olympia press' d.
*****

And stamp'd an image of himself, a sovereign of the world.
The listening crowd admire the sound,
A present deity ! they shout around :
A present deity ! the vaulted roofs rebound :

With ravish'd ears

The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to hod,

And seems to shake the spheres.

The praise of Bacchus then, the sweet musician sung :
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young :
The jolly god in triumph comes ;
Sound the trumpets ; beat the drums ;
Flush' d with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face ;

Now give the hautboys breath : he comes ! he comes !
Bacchus, ever fair and young,

Drinking joys did first ordain ;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure :
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure ;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain ;

Fought all his battles o'er again ;

And thrice he routed all his foes ; and thrice he slew the slain.
The master saw the madness rise
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes ;
And, while he Heaven and Earth defied,
Chang'd his hand, and check'd his pride.

He chose a mournful Muse,

Soft pity to infuse :
He sung Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen.
Fallen from his high estate.

And welt' ring in his blood ;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 211

On the bare earth expos'd he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast eyes the joyless victor sate.
Revolving in his alter' d soul

The various turns of Chance below ;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,

And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smil'd, to see
That love was in the next degree :
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble ;
Honour, but an empty bubble ;
Never ending, still beginning ;
Fighting still, and still destroying ;

If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying :
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee :
The many rend the skies with loud applause ;
So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz'd on the fair
Who caus'd his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again :
At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again :
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark ! hark ! the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from the dead,

And, amaz'd, he stares around.

' Revenge ! revenge !' Timotheus cries.

' See the Furies arise :

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes .

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand !
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,

And unburied remain

Inglorious on the plain :

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew !

Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods !'
The princes applaud, with a furious joy ;
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy :

Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey.
And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy.

14—2

212 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Thus, long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute ;
Timotheus, to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame ;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store
Enlarg'd the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds.
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown ;

He rais'd a mortal to the skies,

She drew an angel down.1

FROM 'ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL'

PART OF SHAFTESBURY'S ADDRESS TO MONMOUTH.

Auspicious prince, at whose nativity

Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky,

Thy longing country's darling and desire,

Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire ;

Their second Moses, whose extended wand

Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land ;

Whose dawning day in every distant age

Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage :

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,

The young men's vision, and the old men's dream !

Thee, Saviour, thee, the nation's vows confess,

And, never satisfied with seeing, bless :

Swift unbespoken pomp thy steps proclaim,

And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name.

JOSEPH ADDISON
1672-1719

' ONE may justly apply to this excellent author/ says Melmoth,
' what Plato, in his allegorical language, says of Aristophanes,
that the Graces, having searched all the world for a temple
wherein they might for ever dwell, settled at last in the breast of
Addison.' This ishigh and undeniably well-merited praise. Joseph
Addison was a thoroughly great man and a great writer, but he
was not a great poet in the sense that Milton or Shakespeare
or Dante or even Shelley was great. Yet it is just possible that

1 One of the traditions respecting the power of Cecilia's melody.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 213

if he had written only poetry he might have attained to a higher
niche in the temple of fame than that which his diversified talents
enabled him to reach. Smooth, polished, and harmonious as are
his poetical exercises, yet there is too often something artificial
about their treatment and coldness in the effect produced.

In dealing with Addison in a history of poetry, the biographer
is thrown upon the horns of a dilemma. There is a strong tempta-
tion to look upon him broadly as a man of many parts, whereas
it is as a poet only that the mention of him in such a work as this
can be excused. Therefore as a poet let us contemplate him.

It is notable, at the outset, that it was by the writing and publi-
cation of verses that Addison first drew attention to the literary
bent and power of his mind.

Joseph Addison was born on the ist of May, 1672, at Milston
Rectory, near Amesbury, in Wiltshire. His father was the Rev.
Launcelot Addison, Rector of Milston, and subsequently Dean of
Lichfield. Joseph received the rudiments of education first at
Amesbury, under the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Nash, then at Salis-
bury and Lichfield. From Lichfield he went to the Charterhouse
School in London. It was here that he formed a friendship with Sir
Richard Steele, who became eventually his coadjutor in carrying
on the Spectator and Taller. When he was fifteen years of age
he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, from which, after
obtaining a scholarship, he removed to Magdalen College. He
graduated M.A. in 1693, but continued to reside in the city of
Oxford for ten years. As a student, he was conspicuous for his
learning, and was a great favourite amongst his fellow-students,
partly, no doubt, on account of his abilities, and also in conse-
quence of the gentleness and modesty of his disposition. It was
his intention at this early stage of his career to take Holy Orders,
but this ambition was abandoned for reasons which were highly
creditable to him.

Addison showed quite as much worldly wisdom as literary skill
in the matter of his first poetical efforts. He commenced, in
1694, with an Address to Dry den, by which he gained the friend-
ship of the great poet — no slight achievement for a young man
just embarking upon the waters of literary life. The lines can
boast of but trifling poetical merit, but here and there they give
indication that the writer is capable of greater things. Shortly
afterwards he translated a part of the Fourth Georgic, and Dryden

214 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

admitted the work into a book of miscellanies. In 1695 he pub-
lished some verses in honour of King William. They were not
very brilliant, but he sent them to Lord Keeper Somers, who was
so pleased with the poem and the compliment that he, in accord-
ance with the poet's wish, laid them before the King himself.
As a consequence of this, Addison was endowed with a comfort-
able pension of £300 a year, which made it possible for him to
indulge in his favourite occupation of travelling, and he went
abroad for two years, during which time he made a tour in Italy.
On the death of King William he lost his pension, and his career
as a traveller was cut short. He returned to London, poor but
not depressed, and took apartments ' up two pairs of stairs in the
Haymarket.' Here he settled down to work in solid earnest, and
soon he was wise enough to seize another opportunity. The
Battle of Blenheim was fought and won on August 13, 1704.
The fame of Marlborough must be fitly celebrated in heroic verse,
and Lord Halifax introduced Addison to Treasurer Godolphin
as the very man to write it. As a result of the command
which followed, Addison produced the ablest of all his poems.
This work was entitled The Campaign, and so favourable was the
impression which it made on the minds of the Ministry that they
appointed the poet to the remunerative office of Commissioner
of Appeals. The successful poem was greatly admired by even
the keenest of critics, and especially by the Minister at whose
request it was written. • It is addressed to the Duke of Marl-
borough, and gives a rousing sketch of the military transactions
in 1704, dwelling in the most eulogistic strain upon the courage,
energy, and military genius of the triumphant general, who is the
hero of the piece, and who is compared by the poet to an angel
guiding the whirlwind. It was pronounced to be superior not
only to Boileau, but to anything which had hitherto appeared in
the same style. It was written at a time when literary services
were oftentimes rewarded by advancement, and Addison was
very soon after this appointed Under-Secretary of State, and a
little later Chief Secretary for Ireland.

In 1713 Addison made a ' hit ' with the tragedy of Cato, which
was speedily dramatized, and had a run of thirty-five nights in
succession. On this may be said to rest his chief claim to celebrity
as a poet. It is supposed to have had its beginning during the
undergraduate days of its author at Oxford, and certainly points

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 215

to a time of close scholastic study. It promulgated principles
which make for liberty and revolutionary methods. The play
pleased both Whigs and Tories immensely, and was even trans-
lated into French, Italian, and German. It was performed by
the Jesuits at their college of St. Omer. But, popular as it was,
the critics did not receive it with unqualified praise. Dennis, one
of the most eminent of them, attacked it somewhat mercilessly, but
it survived all such attacks, and is still accredited by a consensus
of public opinion with the possession of many powerful passages.
The Soliloquy on the Immortality of the Soul, for instance, has been
included in almost every collection of greater poems which has
been compiled and issued since. Pope lays emphasis on, and
seeks in a measure to explain, the fact that both parties were
equally charmed with the work. ' He was not so much the wonder
of Rome in his days as he is of Britain in ours ; and although all
the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a
party play, yet what the author once said of another may most
properly be applied to him on this occasion :

' " Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost,

And factions strive who shall applaud him most." '

The first performance took place at Drury Lane in April, 1713,
and the house was filled from floor to ceiling with all the leading
wits and statesmen of the day, with no small sprinkling of repre-
sentatives of the fashionable world. ' We,' says Dr. Collier,
' who live in days when Kean writes himself F.S.A., and every
buckle and shoe-tie of the wardrobe, in our better theatres, at
least, must pass the scrutiny of men deeply skilled in all the
fashions of antiquity, smile at the incongruity of Cato in a flowered
dressing-gown and a black wig that cost fifty guineas ; and the
brocaded Marcia in that famous hoop of Queen Anne's time,
which has revived in the crinoline1 of Victoria's gentle reign.
But Cato, thus attired, was not laughed at, for it was the theatrical
fashion of the day to dress all characters in wig and hoop, exactly
like those worn by the people of quali ty, who took snuff or flirted
the fan in the resplendent box-row. A similar anachronism was
committed by the old Norman romancers, who turned every hero
— no matter whether he was Abraham or Alexander — into a steel-
clad knight of the Middle Ages.' The intrigue dealt with in the

1 Dr. Collier wrote in 1864.

2l6

play may be, and has been, accused of want of probability and
even of interest ; the characters, including Cato himself, have
been charged with frigidity, as mere embodiments of rhetorical
moralism ; but, in spite of these drawbacks, if they exist at all,
the play stands forth as a fair example of the singular genius of
a man who in this and in other branches of literary creation was
one of the most gifted of his age.

Addison had acted for a time as tutor to the son of the Countess
Dowager of Warwick. After a long probation of courtship, he
married this lady in 1716, but, as was the case with Dryden, this
union did not bring him happiness. On the contrary, his domestic
discomforts drove him in his later years to seek enjoyment in
tavern life, and thus to excesses which had their ill-effect upon his
constitution, and tended to shorten his days. There can be no
doubt that the haughty disposition and irritable temper of his
wife was in a measure to blame for this. The charm and dignity
even of Holland House, the historic mansion which amongst its
glories numbers the fact that Addison once called it home, were
not sufficient to compensate for the lack of that gentle womanly
influence which the Countess's companionship failed to bestow.

It was in 1717 that Addison stepped upon the topmost rung of
his successful political career. He was made Secretary of State,
and brought to the discharge of the duties of that high office all
those excellent qualities which had distinguished him in less
exalted spheres. But he did not retain this post for long. He
retired, on a comfortable pension of £1,500 a year, and resolved
to devote the rest of his life to the composition of an exhaustive
work on the evidences of Christianity. But this he was not to
accomplish, for he died in the year 1719, from a complication of
asthma and dropsy, leaving the work unfinished. The work, so
far as it went, was published after his death, and was found to
possess merits of a very high order, though it has since then been
superseded by more elaborate works upon the same subject. A
sad feature of this great writer's closing years consisted in the fact
that he engaged in a quarrel with his life-long friend, Sir Richard
Steele, about some trifling matter which is now buried in oblivion,
and was further vexed in spirit by a misunderstanding with Pope.
The latter was Pope's fault, he having malignantly accused
Addison of unfair conduct respecting his translation of the Iliad,
and of jealousy concerning the success of The Rape of the Lock.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 217

Two interesting stories are told of Addison's deathbed. Pope
tells us that he sent the young Earl of Warwick with a message to
Gay, the poet, saying he wished to speak to him. Gay came to
the bedside, and the dying man craved his forgiveness for a wrong
he had done him, for which, he said, he would make reparation
if he recovered. He did not explain the nature or extent of the
injury in question, but Gay conjectured that it might refer to his
having prevented his political advancement in some secret way.
At another time he sent for his former pupil, the Earl of Warwick,
and warned him against the evils of a dissipated and licentious
life. ' I have sent for you,' he said, ' that you may see in what
peace a Christian can die.' The end came peacefully at Holland
House on the i7th of June, 1719.

Amongst countless eloquent tributes to the memory of this
great poet and greater essayist, we quote the following from the
Edinburgh Review :

'The piety of Addison was in truth of a singularly cheerful
character. The feeling which predominates in all his devotional
writings is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise and all-
powerful Friend, who had watched over his cradle with more than
maternal tenderness ; who had listened to his cries before they
could form themselves into prayer ; who had preserved his youth
from the snares of vice ; who had made his cup run over with
worldly blessings ; who had doubled the value of those blessings
by bestowing a thankful heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to
partake of them ; who had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian
Gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, and had
restrained the avalanches of Mount Cenis.1 Of the Psalms, his
favourite was that which represents the Ruler of all things under
the endearing image of a Shepherd, whose crook guides the flock
safe through gloomy and desolate glens, to meadows well watered
and rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he ascribed
all the happiness of his life, he relied in the hour of his death with
the love which casteth out fear.'

It must be remembered that Addison's fame as a poet is very
far behind that which he attained to, and still maintains, as a
writer of fluent and graceful prose. It is no uncommon thing even
now to find writers who attribute the simplicity and elegance of
their own style to a careful study of the essays of Addison. The
1 Obvious references to dangers escaped during his travels.

218 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Spectator and the Tatler will live as long as literature itself. Mr.
D'Israeli, in an essay on the genius of the literary character,
bears testimony to Addison's influence in a striking passage. He
says : ' We read among the Persian fables of Sadi of a swimmer,
who, having found a piece of common earth, was astonished at
its fragrance, and inquired if it were musk or amber. "No,"
replied the perfumed mould, " I am nothing but common earth ;
but roses were planted in my soil, and their odorous virtues have
deliciously penetrated through all my pores. I have retained the
infusion of sweetness ; I had otherwise been but common earth."
Sadi ingeniously applies this to the effect his mishap produces
over him. We may also apply it to an essay of Addison, which,
like the roses on the common earth, impregnates with intellectual
sweetness an uncultivated mind.'

Addison wrote an opera in 1707, which he called Rosamond,
in which there are sweet and musical songs which are in his
happiest poetic vein. But perhaps his hymns may live as long
in the sunshine of public esteem as any of his metrical works,
for they are refined and beautiful, and delicately tinged through-
out with that spirit of manly piety which permeated the writer's
soul. We append some verses of one of them :

How are thy servants blest, O Lord !

How sure is their defence !
Eternal wisdom is their guide,

Their help Omnipotence.

In foreign realms and lands remote,

Supported by Thy care,
Through burning climes I passed unhurt,

And breathed the tainted air.

Thy mercy sweetened every toil,

Made every region please ;
The hoary Alpine hills it warmed,

And smoothed the Tyrrhene seas.
* * * * *

My life, if Thou preserv'st my life,

Thy sacrifice shall be ;
And death, if death must be my doom.

Shall join my soul to Thee.

SOLILOQUY ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

It must be so — Plato, thou reason's! well ! —
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality ?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into nought ? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 219

'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us ;

'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,

And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity ! thou pleasing, dreadful thought !

Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ?

The wide, th' unbounded prospect lies before me ;

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.

Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us —

And that there is, all Nature cries aloud

Through all her works — he must delight in virtue :

And that which he delights in must be happy.

But when ? or where ? This world was made for Caesar.

I'm weary of conjectures — this must end them.

[Laying his hand on his sword
Thus am I doubly armed : my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me :
This1 in a moment brings me to an end ;
But this2 informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years ;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds.

ODE

The spacious firmament on high.

With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their great Original proclaim :

Th' unwearied sun, from day to day,

Does his Creator's power display,

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And, nightly to the list'ning earth,
Repeats the story of her birth ;
While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ?
What though no real voice nor sound
Amid their radiant orbs be found ?
In Reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice ;
For ever singing as they shine
' The hand that made us is divine.

1 The sword. '2 Plato's book on the Immortality of the Soul.

220 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM THE ' LETTER FROM ITALY.'

For wheresoe'er I turn my ravished eyes
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise ;
Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground ;
For here the muse so oft her harp has strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung ;
Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows,
And every stream in heavenly numbers flows.
See how the golden groves around me smile,
That shun the coast of Britain's stormy isle ;
Or when transplanted and preserved with care,
Curse the cold clime, and starve in northern air.
Here kindly warmth their mountain juice ferments
To nobler tastes, and more exalted scents ;
Even the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom.
And trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
Bear me, some god, to Baia's gentle seats,
Or cover me in Umbria's green retreats ;
Where western gales eternally reside,
And all the seasons lavish all their pride ;
Blossoms, and fruits, and flowers together rise,
And the whole year in gay confusion lies.
How has kind heaven adorn' d the happy land.
And scattered blessings with a wasteful hand !
But what avail her unexhausted stores,
Her blooming mountains, and her sunny shores,
With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart,
The smiles of nature and the charms of art,
While proud oppression in her valleys reigns,
And tryanny usurps her happy plains ?
The poor inhabitant beholds in vain
The redd'ning orange, and the swelling grain ;
Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines,
And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines ;
Starves in the midst of nature's bounty curst,
And in the loaded vineyard dies for thirst.

O Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright,

Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight !

Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,

And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train ;

Eased of her load, subjection grows more light.

And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight ;

Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay,

Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.

Thee, goddess, thee, Britannia's isle adores ;

How has she oft exhausted all her stores,

How oft in fields of death thy presence sought,

Nor thinks the mighty prize too dearly bought !

On foreign mountains may the sun refine

The grape's soft juice, and mellow it to wine ;

With citron groves adorn a distant soil,

And the fat olive swell with floods of oil :

We envy not the warmer clime, that lies

In ten degrees of more indulgent skies ;

Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,

Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine :

'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle,

And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 221

EDMUND WALLER

1605-1687

THIS ' courtly and amatory poet ' was born at Coleshill, in Hert-
fordshire, and was a member of an ancient and dignified family.
He was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, and
became a Member of Parliament in the same year that he wrote
his first poem, at the early age of eighteen years. He is said to
have been ' the darling of the House of Commons ' on account of
the remarkable brilliance of his repartee and the influence and
grace of his utterances. He was a veritable ' Vicar of Bray ' in
politics, being either a Royalist or a Roundhead as occasion sug-
gested. In spite of his graceful diction and attractive manners,
he was unsuccessful in a love affair, for the fair Dorothea, daughter
of the Earl of Leicester, turned a deaf ear to his compliments,
and married the Earl of Sunderland. Under the name of Sacha-
rissa, he had many a time poured forth his full soul to her in
verse, and it is said that, meeting her in after-years, the aged lady
asked him when he would again write such love-strains to}her.
The answer was, ' When you are as young, madam, and as hand-
some as you were then.' In the poetic passage in which he
laments her cruelty, he boasts that the reverse in love made him
immortal as a poet ; he makes this allusion to the fable of Apollo
and Daphne :

He catched at love, and filled his arm with bays.

A collection of Waller's poems was published in the year
1664. It passed through many editions in his lifetime, and a
second collection was made in 1690, three years after his death.

The poetry of Waller is smooth and cultivated, and suggestive
of the man himself. There are man}' fine lines in it, such as :

Of just Apollo, president of verse.
His lines on a girdle are typical of his amatory style :

That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind :
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this hath done.

*****
' A narrow compass ! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair :
Give me but what this ribbon bound
Take all the rest the sun goes round.'

222 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

' One thing,' says Dr. Craik, ' must be admitted about Waller's
poetry '• it is free from all mere verbiage and empty sound ; if
he rarely or never strikes a very powerful note, there is at least
always something for the fancy or the understanding, as well as
for the ear, in what he writes. He abounds also in 'ingenious
thoughts, which he dresses to the best advantage, -and exhibits
with great transparency of style. Eminent, however, as he is
in his class, he must be reckoned in that subordinate class of
poets who think and express themselves chiefly in similitudes,
not among those who conceive and write passionately and meta-
phorically. He has a decorative and illuminating, but not a
transforming imagination.'

OLD AGE AND DEATH

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er ;
So calm are we when passions are no more :
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made ;

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become.

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

TO A ROSE

Go, lovely Rose !
Tell her, that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,

That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired :

Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired.
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die ! that she
The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee :
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair !

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 223

WILLIAM CONGREVE
1670-1729

WILLIAM CONGREVE was a member of an ancient and honourable
family. He was born in Yorkshire, but was educated at Kilkenny
and at the University of Dublin. At the latter place he acquired
an amount of learning which soon raised him ' far above the
generality of contemporary writers of belles-lettres.' Having left
the University, he proceeded to London, nominally for the pur-
pose of studying law at the Middle Temple, but really to become
the darling of society. ' He thirsted after fame,' says Mr. Shaw,
' as a man of elegance and a man of letters ; but as the literary
profession was at that time in a very degraded social position, he
was tormented by the difficulty of harmonizing the two incom-
patible aspirations ; and it is related that when Voltaire paid him
a visit he affected the character of a mere gentleman, upon which
the French wit, with equal acuteness and sense, justly reproved
his vanity by saying, " If you had been a mere gentleman I would
not have come to see you." A serious affection of the eyes,
which resulted in total blindness, cast a gloom over the poet's
declining years. He died in London. He left the bulk of his
fortune, about £10,000, to the eccentric Duchess of Maryborough,
with whom he had formed a close friendship. This lad}' is said
to have spent £7,000 of this sum on a diamond necklace. Re-
marking upon th'is incident, the poet Young said afterwards,
' How much better it would have been to have given it to Mrs.
Bracegirdle !' an actress with whom the dramatist had been very
intimate for years. But the Duchess was not ungrateful, and
honoured the poet with a magnificent funeral. The body lay in
state in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster, and the pall-
bearers included the Duke of Bridgewater, the Earl of Wilming-
ton (an ex-Speaker of the House of Commons), Lord Cobham,
and other men of rank and distinction. It is further told that
Her Grace had a clockwork ivory statue of her late friend placed
daily on her table, and a wax doll in which his image was faith-
fully reproduced. The poet had suffered from the gout, and the
wax doll's feet were regularly poulticed by the Duchess's medical
attendants.

Congreve's first play was The Old Bachelor, produced in 1693.

224 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

This was followed by The Double Dealer, in 1694, and by Love for
Love, in 1695. His only tragedy, The Mourning Bride, appeared
in 1697, and may be said to have greater merit than most of the
serious plays of the time. ' It has the stiffness of the French
school, with no small affectation of fine writing, without passion,
yet it possesses poetical scenes and language.' Congreve was a
complete master of the art of dramatic representation, but the
licentiousness of his comedies has banished them from the stage.
The following is a portion of a passage which Dr. Johnson con-
sidered to be the most poetical paragraph in the whole range of
the drama, not excluding Shakespeare from the comparison :

DESCRIPTION OF A CATHEDRAL

How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable,
Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight ; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold.
And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart.
Give me thy hand and let me hear thy voice ;
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice — my own affrights me with its echoes.

The opening lines of The Mourning Bride are often quoted,
especially the first line :

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And, as with living souls, have been informed
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.

SIR JOHN DENHAM

1615-1668

SIR JOHN DENHAM was the son of a Chief Baron of the Exchequer
in Ireland. He was born in 1615, and educated at the University
of Oxford, and was a supporter of Charles I. In his younger days
he was inclined to be wild and dissipated, and lost a great portion
of his inheritance at the gaming-table. His royal patron ad-
vanced him to the position of Governor of Farnham Castle, and
when the King was taken prisoner by the army, Denham acted as

GREATER POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 225

his secretary, being furnished with nine different ciphers for the
purpose of carrying on a secret correspondence. Milton tells us
that Charles was given to a close study of Shakespeare's plays, but
it would seem as if he thought it proper that poetry should be
kept apart from matters of State, for he told Denham, on seeing
one of his poems, ' that when men are young, and have little else
to do, they may vent the overflowings of their fancy in that way ;
but when they are thought fit for more serious employments, if
they still persisted in that course, it looked as if they minded not
the way to any better.' Denham took the hint, and refrained
from this method of giving vent to the overflowings of his fancy
for awhile. The poet accompanied the Duke of York to France
in 1648, and took up his abode for some time in that country.
During his absence, his estate was confiscated and sold by the
Long Parliament. The Restoration, however, saw him placed in
full possession of his rights and property once more. The King
made him a Knight of the Bath, and appointed him surveyor of
the royal residences. In later life Denham forsook his earlier
excesses, and took to himself a wife, but the lady does not seem
to have contributed in any way to his happiness. In the closing
years of his life he became temporarily insane, but on his recovery
he wrote a fine poem on the death of Cowley, a composition which
is one of his best.

Denham, who is at the most a poet of the secondary order, is now
best known as the author of a poem called Cooper's Hill, a work
which will always be regarded as one of the most striking poems
of the century in which it was written. It carries the distinction
of being the first example in the history of English poetry of what
is called topographical verse. Cooper's Hill, the scene which is
described in the poem, is very beautifully situated on the Thames,
not far from Richmond. But though the merit of the work
throughout is of high order, yet it may fairly be said that there
are four lines in it which not only surpass anything else in the
same poem, but are universally acknowledged to be equal to
anything of the kind in any language. In these four lines he
embodies a wish that he himself might possess the qualities which
he attributes to the noble river of which he writes :

O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme !
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull.
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

15

226 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

It is Dr. Johnson who gives Denham the credit of being ' the
author of a species of composition that may be denominated local
poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular
landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such
embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection
or incidental meditation.'

FROM 'COOPER'S HILL'

My eye, descending from the hill, surveys

Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays ;

Thames, the most lov'd of all the ocean's sons

By his old sire, to his embraces runs,

Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,

Like mortal life to meet eternity.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,

Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold,

His genuine and less guilty wealth to explore,

Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,

O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing.

And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring,

And then destroys it with too fond a stay,

Like mothers which their infants overlay ;

Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,

Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.

Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise,

But my fix'd thoughts my wandering eye betrays.

Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late

A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate

Th' adjoining abbey fell. May no such storm

Fall on our times, where ruin must reform !

Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous dire offence.

What crime could any Christian king incense

To such a rage ? Was't luxury or lust ?

Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ?

Were these their crimes ? They were his own much more

But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor,

Who having spent the treasures of his crown,

Condemns their luxury to feed his own.

FROM ' LINES ON ABRAHAM COWLEY '

But cursed be the fatal hour

That pluck' d the fairest, sweetest flower

That in the Muses' garden grew,

And amongst wither'd laurels threw.

Time, which made them their fame outlive,

To Cowley scarce did ripeness give.

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 227

MINOR POETS OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS

John Webster (whom Hazlitt speaks of as the ' noble-minded ' )
lived and died in the earlier half of the seventeenth century,
and was a dramatic poet of considerable power. He is said
to have been clerk of St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, though the
registers of that parish have been searched in vain for any
mention of him. The following striking words by Mr. Shaw
convey a forcible description of the style of this poet : ' His
terrible and funereal Muse was Death ; his wild imagination
revelled in images and sentiments which breathe, as it were,
the odour of the charnel ; his plays are full of pictures recalling
with fantastic variety all associations of the weakness and futility
of human hopes and interests, and dark questionings of our
future destinies. His literary physiognomy has something of
that dark, bitter, and woeful expression which makes us thrill
in the portraits of Dante.' Webster's dramas include The
Duchess of Malfi, The Thracian Wonder, The Devil's Law-case,
Appius and Virginia, and The White Devil. The following
lines are from a funeral dirge :

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole.

To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm.

And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm ;

But keep the wolf far hence, that's foe to men,

For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

John Marston, the dramatic poet, is mentioned in history as
one of the chief satirists of the Elizabethan era. He published
three books of satires, under the title of The Scourge of Villainy,
in 1599. Little is known of his history beyond the fact that
he had a quarrel with Ben Jonson, who boasted to Drummond
that he had beaten Marston and taken his pistol from him.
' If he had sometimes taken his pen,' says Mr. Chambers, ' he
would have better served society.' He wrote eight plays.

227 15 — 2

228 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

John Ford (1586-1639) was a lawyer who wrote plays merely
for pastime. He came of an old Devonshire family. He first
wrote for, the stage in unison with Dekker and Webster. His
works consist of The Lover's Melancholy, which appeared in
1628, dedicated to his friends of Gray's Inn, three tragedies
entitled respectively Love's Sacrifice, The Brother and Sister, and
The Broken Heart, all of which were published in 1633, a drama
called Perkin Warbeck, and two pieces entitled Fancies Chaste
and Noble (1638) and The Lady's Trial (1639). Charles Lamb
ranks Ford in the first order of poets, but in this few (if any)
other critics agree with him. Mr. Chambers says : ' A tone of
pensive tenderness and pathos, with a peculiarly soft and musical
style of blank verse, characterize this poet. The choice of his
subjects was unhappy.' Mr. Hartley Coleridge says that ' the
choice of horrible stories for his two best plays may have been
merely an exercise of intellectual power.' Mr. Shaw remarks
that ' if Massinger, among the Elizabethan dramatists, be pecu-
liarly the poet of moral dignity and tenderness, John Ford must
be called the great painter of unhappy love.' He began his
literary career by writing the last act of The Witch of Edmonton,
the rest of that work being composed by Dekker and William
Rowley.

Philip Massinger (1584-1639) was a writer of tragedies and
comedies, as well as of ' romantic dramas partaking of both
characters.' But little is known of his personal history beyond
the facts that he was by birth a gentleman, and four years of
his life were spent at the University of Oxford. He is supposed
to have been born at Salisbury, his father being in the service
•of the Earl of Pembroke, evidently holding a responsible office,
inasmuch as he was entrusted with letters to Queen Elizabeth.
Philip lived in great poverty, and was found dead in his bed
' at his house on the Bankside ' one morning in 1639. He was
described in the register of the parish in which he was buried
as ' Philip Massinger, a stranger.' His chief plays are The
Virgin Martyr (circa 1620) ; The Bondman (1623) ; The Fatal
Dowry (1620) ; The City Madam (1632) ; and A New Way
to Pay Old Debts (circa 1623). Of thirty-eight dramatic pieces
which he is said to have written, either wholly or in part, only
eighteen have lived. Eight others were in possession of Mr.
Warburton, Somerset Herald, whose servant destroyed them.

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 229

William Browne (1590-1645), like Phineas and Giles Fletcher,
was an admirer and imitator of Spenser. He wrote a goodly
number of lyrics and short poems, all of which were composed
before he was thirty years of age. Indeed, the best is said to
have been written when he was not much more than twenty.
He was tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, and afterwards lived in
the household of the Earl of Pembroke. Britannia's Pastorals,
published in two parts, appeared in 1613 and 1616. It is written
in the heroic couplet, and is a graceful and poetical description
of country life, with the characteristics of which the poet was
very familiar. Warton compares one passage of Browne's to
a similar passage in Milton's L' Allegro, and the greater poet is
supposed to have copied, in Lycidas, one of the minor poet's
pastorals.

John Taylor (circa 1580-1654), known as ' The King's Majesty's
Water Poet,' was born in Gloucester, and served for a time in
the navy. About the year 1630, having served his apprentice-
ship to a waterman on the Thames, he set up a public-house,
besides plying his trade as a waterman along the coasts. He
made a strange journey on foot from London to Edinburgh,
accompanied by a servant on horseback, who carried the pro-
visions. He met Ben Jonson at Leith, and that poet magnani-
mously presented him with a piece of gold ' to drink his health
in England.' The singular journey was commemorated by the
Water Poet in The Penniless Pilgrimage. Taylor was a volumin-
ous writer, his collected works numbering no less than 138
separate pieces in prose and verse. It is said that King James
used to say that he knew of no verses equal to ' The Sculler's,'
that being another of Taylor's nicknames.

Thomas Dekker, who is supposed to have died in 1641, was a
minor dramatic poet who wrote more than twenty plays. He
was connected with Ben Jonson in writing plays for the Lord
Admiral's Theatre. Ben and he fell out, however, with the
result that the former has satirized Dekker in his Poetaster.
To this Dekker replied in a drama entitled Satiromastix. His
best play is Fortunatus, or the Wishing Cap.

Phineas Fletcher (1584-1650) and Giles Fletcher (circa 1588-
1623) were two brothers, ' connected by blood with their great

230 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

contemporary the dramatist.' The former was the author of a
poem in six cantos entitled The Purple Island, or the Isle of
Man. Of this work Mr. Hallam says that ' from its nature it is
insuperably wearisome, yet his language is often very poetical,
his versification harmonious, his invention fertile.' It is nothing
more than a detailed description of the mechanism of the human
mind and body.

The work of Giles Fletcher is called Christ's Victory and
Triumph, and is more interesting. Giles, though more vigorous,
is also more affected in his style than Phineas, whose verses are
more tuneful and harmonious. Both poets bear a certain resem-
blance to Spenser, of whom they were professed admirers.
Campbell, in speaking of Giles, says : ' Inferior as he is to
Spenser and Milton, he might be figured, in his happiest moments,
as a link of connection in our poetry between these congenial
spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to
the latter in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained'

PHINEAS FLETCHER
FROM 'THE PURPLE ISLAND'

Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found !
For all our good we hold from Heaven by lease.
With many forfeits and conditions bound ;
Nor can we pay the fine, and rentage due :
Though now but writ, and sealed, and given anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.

GILES FLETCHER

FROM 'CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH '

The garden like a lady fair was cut,

That lay as if she slumbered in delight,

And to the open sky her eyes did shut ;

The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right

In a large round, set with the flowers of light :

The flowers-de-luce, and the round sparks of dew

That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew

Like twinkling stars, that sparkle in the evening blue.

Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (1573-1631), was born in
London. He was educated partly at Oxford and partly at
Cambridge. At first he was designed for the legal profession,
and studied law with that intent, but, though of Roman Catholic
parentage, he abandoned the idea, and took Holy Orders in the

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 231

Established Church at the age of forty-two. He became so
celebrated as a preacher that he is said to have had the offer of
fourteen livings during the first year of his ministry. He
married a niece of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. In 1621 he was
appointed to the deanery of St. Paul's, and was buried in 1631
in old St. Paul's. His works were collected and published in 1650
by his son. They consist of love verses, satires, epigrams, elegies,
religious poems, and complimentary verses. He has been classed
by Dr. Johnson amongst the Metaphysical Poets. Mr. Shaw
says : ' The versification of Donne is singularly harsh and tune-
less, and the contrast between the ruggedness of his expression
and the far-fetched ingenuity of his thought adds to the oddity
of the effect upon the mind of the reader by making him contrast
the unnatural perversion of immense intellectual activity with
the rudeness and frequent coarseness both of the ideas and
the expression.' But it is now freely admitted that, midst
much that may fairly be stigmatized as bad taste, there is a great
deal of true poetical merit in his poetry.

Perhaps the best-known verse by this poet is the following,
from his Divine Poems :

He was the Word, that spake it ;
He took the bread and brake it ;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it.

Donne is the author of ' one of the earliest poetic allusions to
the Copernican system ' :

As new philosophy arrests the sun,
And bids the passive earth about it run.

In one of his elegies appears the line, so often quoted from :
She and comparisons are odious.

George Sandys (1577-1644), described as a ' traveller and poet,'
was the youngest son of an Archbishop of York. His chief
poetical works were a translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid,
and metrical translations of the Psalms, the Book of Job, etc.
He composed a Hymn to my Redeemer which he hung as an offering
on the sepulchre of Christ. It runs thus :

Saviour of mankind — man — Emmanuel,
Who sinless died for sin, Who vanquished hell,
The first-fruits of the grave ; Whose life did give
Light to our darkness ; in Whose death we live.

232 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

0 strengthen Thou my faith ! Correct my will,
That mine may Thine obey ! Protect me still,
So that the latter death may not devour

My soul, sealed with Thy seal ! — So in the hour
When Thou, Whose body sanctified this tomb,
Unjustly judged, a glorious Judge shalt come
To judge the world with justice, by that sigh

1 may be known, and entertained for Thine !

Sir John Beaumont (1582-1628), the elder brother of Francis
Beaumont, the celebrated dramatist, was the author of a poem
on Bosworth Field, in the heroic couplet, and other verses. The
poem on Bosworth Field was published by the author's son in
1629. His versification is ' correct and forcible,' though ' gener-
ally cold and unimpassioned.'

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639) was Secretary to the Earl of
Essex, and was more distinguished as a politician and diplo-
matist than as a poet. He became Provost of Eton, and took
deacon's Orders. His poems, upon which his literary fame
chiefly rests, are ' marked by a fine vein of feeling and happy
expression.' The following lines are from the poem on The
Character of a Happy Life :

How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another's will ;
Whose armour is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill !

William Chamberlayne (1619-1689) was a member of the
medical profession who lived at Shaf tesbury. He was the author
of an heroic poem in five books entitled Pharonnida, and a tragi-
comedy called Love's Victory, which was produced after the
Restoration under the new name of Wits led by the Nose, or the
Poet's Revenge. Some of his work is excellent, but at times he
drifts into the merely trivial and commonplace. Speaking of
virgin purity, he says :

The morning pearls,
Dropt in the lily's spotless bosom, are
Less chastely cool, ere the meridian sun
Hath kissed them into heat.

Charles Cotton (1630-1687) was a son of Sir George Cotton, and
a friend of Izaak Walton. On the death of his father he inherited
an estate at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, which, however, was
much encumbered. As a means of increasing his income he
resorted to literary work. He became a Captain in the army

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 2&

at the age of forty, and married, as his second wife, the Countess-
Dowager of Ardglass. This lady had a dowry of £1,500 a year,
but it was outside the reach of the poet's mismanagement, and
he died insolvent in 1687. As a poet he has been classed with
Andrew Marvell. He was the author of several humorous
poems, and Campbell has said that his Voyage to Ireland seems
to anticipate the manner of Anstey in the Bath Guide.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), lived a dissipated
life, and died of physical exhaustion at the early age of thirty-
three. His poems were not, as a rule, distinguished for any
particular grace of diction. One line of his is often quoted as
giving a true description of King Charles II., whom he describes as
A merry monarch, scandalous and poor.

Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701) was a better man than
Rochester, and quite his equal as a poet. He is described as
' one of the brightest satellites of the Court of Charles II.' The
King is said to have asked him ' if he had not obtained a patent
from Nature to be Apollo's viceroy.' The poems and plays of
Sedley were extravagantly praised by the critics of the day,
but they were not without conspicuous merit. He lived to a
good old age, and the words which he has applied to one of his
own heroines may be quoted as applying to himself, for, though
in early life he was somewhat dissipated, he

, Bloomed in the winter of his days
Like Glastonbury thorn.

Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, was the daughter of Sir Charles
Lucas, and a Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria. She
published a volume of verse entitled Poems and Fancies. She
was born in 1624. ' It pleased .God,' she wrote, ' to command
His servant Nature to indue me with a poetical and philosophical
genius even from my very birth.' The most popular of the
Duchess's poems is called The Pastime and Recreation of the
Queen of Fairies in Fairy Land. In her poem on Mirth and
Melancholy, speaking of the latter, she says :

In hollow caves, thatched houses, and low cells,
She loves to live, and there alone she dwells.

Mrs. Katherine Philips (1631-1664), a poetess known as
' Orinda,' was the wife of James Philips of the Priory, Cardigan.
She was a very popular writer of verse in her day.

A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

John Philips (1676-1708) was the author of a parody on the
style of Milton, entitled The Splendid Shitting, ' a splendid jeu
d'esprit.' He also wrote a poem on the Battle of Blenheim,
and ' a half-didactic, half-descriptive poem on the manufacture
of Cider, in imitation of the Georgics of Virgil. He was an
admirer and professed imitator of Milton. ' The notion,' says
Mr. Chambers, ' that Philips was able, by whatever he might
write, to blast the fame of Milton, is one of those preposterous
conceits which even able men will sometimes entertain.'

The Rev. John Pomfret (1667-1703) was a clergyman, who
became Rector of Maiden in Bedfordshire. He wrote a number
of poems and some Pindaric Essays, but is now chiefly remem-
bered for his poem entitled The Choice, of which Dr. Johnson
has remarked that no composition in our language has been
oftener perused. Southey asks why this poem is the most
popular in the English language, and Campbell replies that ' it
might have been demanded with equal propriety why London
Bridge is built of Parian marble.' The inference is that The
Choice is not the most popular poem in the English language.
But it is a beautiful poem nevertheless. It is somewhat sugges-
tive of Goldsmith, but does not reach so high a level as The
Deserted Village. The following lines will give a good idea of
the style of the poem :

Near some fair town I'd have a private seat,
Built uniform, not little, nor too great ;
Better, if on a rising ground it stood ;
On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood

* * * * *

A little garden, grateful to the eye,
And a cool rivulet run murmuring by,
On whose delicious banks a stately row
Of shady limes or sycamores should grow.
At the end of which a silent study placed,
Should be with all the noblest authors graced.
Horace and Virgil, in whose mighty lines
Immortal wit and solid learning shines ;
Sharp Juvenal, and amorous Ovid too,
Who all the turns of love's soft passion knew.

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1637-1706), was ' a perfect
specimen of the aristocratic literary dilettante ' of his day.
His best poem is a well-known s*bng entitled To all you Ladies
now on Land, which was written by him at sea when in the first
Dutch War he was a volunteer under the Duke of York. It

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 235

is addressed to the ladies of Whitehall, and ' breathes the gay
and gallant spirit that animates the chanson militaire in which
the French so much excel.'

John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), is chiefly
remembered, as a poet, for his Essay on Poetry, written in the
heroic couplet. He was associated in his later years with the
wits and poets of the reign of Queen Anne, but he belongs more
to the preceding age. The Essay on Poetry was issued anony-
mously in 1682. The second and enlarged edition appeared in
1691, and was praised by Pope and Dryden. Pope, indeed,
is said to have had a hand in its improvement, and it seems to
have suggested the greater poet's Essay on Criticism. We quote
six lines of Buckingham's Essay :

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,

Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well ;

No writing lifts exalted man so high

As sacred and soul-moving Poesy :

No kind of work requires so nice a touch.

And, if well-finished, nothing shines so much.

Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711) was educated at Winchester
College and New College, Oxford. He was preferred in 1667 to
the Vicarage of Brightstone, Isle of Wight. He wrote a number
of poems, devotional and didactic, but is chiefly remembered
for his hymns. It is said that he used to sing his Morning and
Evening Hymns daily, accompanying himself upon the lute.
His hymn commencing Awake, my soul, and with the sun is
perhaps the most popular of his poems. In 1684 he was made
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and was one of the seven Bishops
sent to the Tower of London for refusing to sign the Declaration
of Indulgence issued by James II. He was deprived, but had
saved £700, for which sum Lord Weymouth allowed him £80
a year and a residence at Longleat, where he died.

Edward Fairfax (flourished in 1600) was a gentleman of fortune
who became distinguished as a translator of Tasso's Jerusalem.
He dedicated his work to Queen Elizabeth. The first edition
is dated 1600, and the second 1624. ' The poetical beauty and
freedom of Fairfax's version have been the theme of almost
universal praise. Dryden ranged him with Spenser as a master
of our language, and Waller said he derived from him the harmony
of his numbers.' Mr. Hallam says that ' it has been considered

236 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

as one of the earliest works in which the obsolete English which
had not been laid aside in the days of Sackville, and which Spenser
affected to preserve, gave way to a style not much differing, at
least in point of single words and phrases, from that of the present
day.' Fairfax also wrote a number of eclogues, one of which
was published in Cooper's Muses' Library in 1741, but it has
been stigmatized as ' puerile and absurd.' Fairfax is supposed
to have died in 1631, though the exact time of his death, like
that of his birth, cannot be stated with certainty.

Sir Richard Fanshawe (1607-1666) was a brother of Lord
Fanshawe, and secretary to Prince Rupert. He was the author
of translations of the Lusiad of Camoens, and the Pastor Fido
of Guarini, as well as some minor poems. In 1643 he composed
a song entitled The Saint's Encouragement, which is ' full of
clever satire.' He was sent as Ambassador to the Court of Madrid
by King Charles II. in 1665, a year before his death. He married
a daughter of Sir John Harrison. Lady Fanshawe was the
author of Memoirs of her own life, to which she added extracts
from Sir Richard's correspondence.

William Walsh (1663-1708) was a contemporary of Dryden,
who was popular as a minor poet and critic in his day. He was
a friend of Alexander Pope, and helped him in his studies. His
poetry, however, is now forgotten.

Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), was a great
courtier and a patron of poetry. He wrote verses on the death
of Charles II., and joined with Prior in the composition of The
City Mouse and the Country Mouse, a burlesque on Dryden' s
Hind and Panther. Addison's best poem, A Letter from Italy, is
dedicated to him.

Bishop Henry King (1592-1669) was a writer of poems who
held the position of Chaplain to King James I. He published
his poems, elegies, etc., in the year 1657. His poems are chiefly
of a religious tendency, and are smooth and easy-flowing. He
became Bishop of Chichester in 1641.

Lady Elizabeth Carew (flourished in 1613) is supposed to have
written the tragedy entitled Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry,
which appeared in the reign of King James I.

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 237

Dr. Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester (1636-1713), was an
author of considerable repute. Dr. Johnson speaks of him as
' an author whose pregnancy of imagination and eloquence of
language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of literature.'
But this praise is only due to his prose writings. His poetical
works are not worthy of his general reputation. They consist
of a Pindaric Ode on the Plague of Athens, and a Poem on the
Death of the Protector.

The Rev. William Cartwright (1611-1643) was the son of an
innkeeper at Cirencester, who had run through his patrimony.
He was educated at Oxford, and took Holy Orders in 1638. He
died, at the early age of thirty- two, of a fever called camp-
disease. His poetical works were admired by Ben Jonson and
other contemporary poets, and were published in 1651. The
King, who was at Oxford at the time, went into mourning for
Cartwright's death.

Thomas Randolph (1605-1634) was the author of a number of
miscellaneous poems as well as of five dramatic pieces. He
was born at Newnham, and educated at Trinity College, Cam-
bridge. Like Cartwright, he was a friend of Ben Jonson.

The Rev. Dr. William Strode (circa 1598-1644) was born near
Plympton, in Devonshire. He was educated at Christ Church,
Oxford, and took Holy Orders in 1621. He was made a Canon
of Christ Church in 1638.

Thomas Stanley (1625-1678) was the only son of Sir Thomas
Stanley, Knight. He published a volume of verse in 1651.

Sir Samuel Garth (1670-1719) was an eminent member of the
medical profession. He was descended from an old family in
Yorkshire. He was educated at Peterhouse College, Cambridge,
where he remained, it is said, until he ' was created Doctor of
Physic, July 7, 1691.' He died after a short illness in 1719, and
was buried in the church of Harrow-on-the-Hill. In a biographi-
cal sketch prefixed to an edition of his works published at Edin-
burgh in 1779, we read that ' upon the death of Dryden, in May,
1701, by a very strange accident his burial came to depend on
the piety of Dr. Garth, who caused the body to be brought to

238 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

the College of Physicians, proposed, and encouraged by his
gentle example, a subscription for defraying the expense of the
funeral ; and, after pronouncing over the corpse a suitable oration,
he attended the solemnity to Westminster Abbey, where at last
the remains of that great man were interred in Chaucer's grave.'
Garth's chief poem is The Dispensary, a mock-heroic poem in
six cantos, published in 1699 ' to aid the College of Physicians
in a war they were waging with the apothecaries.' The apothe-
caries had ventured to prescribe as well as compound medicines.
Garth was also the author of a number of shorter poems, including
Epistles, Prologues, etc. In politics he was a Whig.

Sir Richard Blackmore (circa 1658-1729) was also a physician
in good practice, and noted for the elegance of his poems. Dr.
Johnson says of him that ' by the unremitted enmity of the
wits, whom he provoked more by his virtue than his dulness,'
he has been ' exposed to worse treatment than he deserved.'
He was knighted by King William III. His chief poem, The
Creation, is designed ' to demonstrate the existence of a Divine
Eternal Mind.' In the opinion of Johnson it ' wants neither
harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of
diction.'

George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (circa 1665-1735), was a poet,
though not of eminence. Pope speaks of him as ' Granville
the Polite.' His poems in praise of Mir a — the Countess of New-
burgh — are the best known of .his works. He was in favour
with Queen Anne, but was committed to the Tower by George I.
on a charge of disloyalty.

Anne, Countess of Winchelsea (circa 1660-1720), was the author
of a graceful poem entitled The Nocturnal Reverie. She was
the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, of Southampton. Words-
worth refers to it in the following complimentary terms : ' It is
remarkable that, excepting The Nocturnal Reverie, and a passage
or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period
intervening between the publication of Paradise Lost and The
Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature.'
The following lines are from a shorter poem by the Countess,
entitled Life's Progress :

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 239

How gaily is at first begun

Our life's uncertain race !
Whilst yet that sprightly morning sun,
With which we just set out to run,

Enlightens all the place.

* * * * *

How soft the first ideas prove

Which wander through our minds !
How full the joys, how free the love,
Which does that early season move,

As flowers the western winds !

Richard Corbet, Bishop of Oxford (1582-1635), was educated
at Westminster and at the University of Oxford. He became a
favourite of King James I., partly on account of his social
qualities and partly because of his opposition to the Puritans.
Through the royal influence he was appointed to the bishopric
of Oxford, and was afterwards translated to the See of Norwich.
The Bishop's poems were first published in 1647, twelve years
after his death. They are of a miscellaneous character, and
include A Journey into France and Farewell to the Fairies.
Of these two, the best known of his writings, the latter is the
more poetical, but all his verses are lively and witty. Though
his conduct was sometimes rather undignified for a bishop, yet
' his toleration, solid sense, and lively talents procured him
deserved esteem and respect.'

William Habington (1605-1654) was educated at the Roman
Catholic college of 'St. Omer, but did not become a Jesuit. His
father and uncle were both mixed up with Babington's con-
spiracy. His mother is said to have written the letter to Lord
Monteagle which had the effect of averting the Gunpowder Plot.
Habington married Lucia, daughter of the first Lord Powis, and
to this lady he gave the poetic name of Castara, which name also
furnished the title of his collected poems, published in 1634.
The poems include The Mistress, The Wife, and The Holy Man.
There is nothing very attractive about his verse, which is often
affected, though occasionally smooth and graceful. His poems
are frequently of a religious tendency. He wrote one play, The
Queen of Arragon, a tragi-comedy, in 1640.

Thomas Carew (1589-1639) was ' one of the ornaments of the
Court of Charles I.,' where he held the offices of Gentleman of the
Privy Chamber and Sewer-in-Ordinary to the King. His

240 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

poetical works were very popular at the time in which they were
written, but they are now forgotten, except by the careful student
of antiquities. Campbell speaks very highly of his genius,
remarking that ' among the poets who have walked in the same
limited path he is pre-eminently beautiful, and deservedly ranks
among the earliest of those who gave a cultivated grace to our
lyrical strains.' Descended from an ancient family, he was
educated at Oxford, and subsequently travelled on the Continent.
His poems are short, as a rule, the longest being a mask called
Ccelum Britannicum. This was written by command of the King,
and is partly written in prose, the lyrical pieces being set to music
by Dr. Henry Lawes'.

Jasper Mayne,D.D. (1604-1672), was a dramatic poet who wrote
two comedies illustrating the manners and customs which pre-
vailed in London during the reign of Charles I. He was a clergy-
man, and eventually became Archdeacon of Chichester and
Chaplain to King Charles II. His comedies are entitled The City
Match and The Amorous War. He also wrote some fugitive
verse and a translation of Lusian's Dialogues. He was a native
of Hatherleigh in Devonshire, and was educated at Westminster
School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took the degree
of D.D.

Thomas Otway (1651-1685) was born at Trotting, in Sussex,
on the 3rd of March, 1651. His father was a clergyman, and the
future poet was educated at Winchester School, whence he pro-
ceeded to Oxford, but he left the University without taking his
degree. He went on the stage in London in 1672, but was
unsuccessful as an actor. He then took to the production of
dramatic pieces, and his latent talent began to show itself more
fully. He became a cornet of Dragoons in 1677, and went to
Flanders with his regiment, but he was soon dismissed the service
for misdemeanour. He then returned to his former avocation
as a playwright, with a fair amount of success, though he con-
tinued always poor, dying at length in penury at the early age of
thirty-four. His fame rests chiefly on his two tragedies, The
Orphan and Venice Preserved. He also produced Caius Marcius
(1680) and The Soldier's Fortune (1681). Otway has been
highly, even extravagantly, praised by excellent critics, and his
work is certainly of a very high order of merit. Sir Walter Scott

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 241

says his talents in scenes of affection rival and sometimes even
excel those of Shakespeare, and he has been compared to Dryden
as regards propriety of style and character to the disadvantage
of the greater poet. We quote some lines from Venice Preserved :

Belvidera. My lord, my love, my refuge !
Happy my eyes when they behold thy face !
My heavy heart will leave its doleful beating
At sight of thee, and bound with sprightly joys.
Oh, smile as when our loves were in the spring,
And cheer my fainting soul !

Jaffter. As when our loves

Were in the spring ! Has, then, my fortune changed thee ?
Art thou not, Belvidera, still the same,
Kind, good, and tender, as my arms first found thee ?
If thou art altered, where shall I have harbour ?
Where ease my loaded heart ? Oh ! where complain ?

Belvidera. Does this appear like change, or love decaying,
When thus I throw myself into thy bosom,
With all the resolution of strong truth ?

Nathaniel Lee (1655-1692) was ' a tragic poet who not only
had the honour of assisting Dryden in the composition of several
of his pieces, but who, in spite of adverse circumstances, and in
particular of several attacks of insanity, one of which necessitated
his confinement during four years in Bedlam, possessed and
deserved a high reputation for genius.' He was the son of a
clergyman, and was educated at Westminster School and at Cam-
bridge. He was an actor for some time,, but abandoned that
profession and became a playwright. As was the case with
Otway, • dramatic authorship was more congenial to him, and
better calculated tb bring out the best of his powers. The pieces
in which he assisted Dryden were (Edipus and The Duke of
Guise. His own works were eleven in number, all tragedies.
The best of these are The Rival Queens ; or, Alexander the Great,
Mithridates, Theodosius, and a pathetic drama called Lucius
Junius Brutus. His style is, as might be expected, sometimes
extravagant and even frenzied, but there is no lack of beautiful
imagery in his verse, such as this :

Speech is morning to the mind ;

It spreads the beauteous images abroad,

Which else lie furled and clouded in the soul.

Thomas Shadwell (1640-1692) is chiefly remembered as the
Mac-Flecknoe of Dryden 's celebrated satire, and the Og of
Absalom and Achitophel. He became Poet-Laureate 'when the
Revolution threw Dryden and other excessive loyalists into the

16

242 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

shade.' Besides seventeen plays, he wrote sezeral other pieces
of poetry, some of which have been commended.

Nicholas Rowe (circa 1673-1718) was a dramatic poet of con-
siderable power. His first tragedy, The Ambitious Stepmother,
was produced with much success in 1700. He afterwards wrote
The Fair Penitent, Ulysses, The Royal Convert, Jane Shore, and
Lady Jane Grey. His dramatic productions amount to eight
in all. He also published some miscellaneous poems which do
not reach a very high level. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey, and his widow erected a handsome monument over
his grave. He was made poet laureate on the accession of
George I.

George Wither (1588-1677) was a poet whose writings display
so many excellent qualities that they have been spoken of by
critics as affording the reader a ' perpetual feast.' He was born
in Hampshire, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. His
first essay in authorship was entitled Abuses Whipt and Stript,
and appeared in 1613. It was a satire of the abuses which led
to the Civil War, and Wither was sent to the Marshalsea prison.
During his incarceration he wrote his most important work, a
collection of poems, in the main of a pastoral character, and
entitled The Shepherd's Hunting. In the Civil War Wither took
the popular side, sold his patrimony in order to raise a troop of
horse for the Parliament, rose to the rank of a Major, and in 1642
was appointed Governor of Farnham Castle. He eventually
became a Major-General under Cromwell, but at the Restoration
he was deprived of all his possessions and again thrown into
prison. During this second period of confinement he wrote a
number of satires and poems. He was released in 1663, and died
four years afterwards. In 1622 he published a collection of his
poems under the title Mistress of Philarette. In 1635 he pub-
lished one of his most popular works, called Emblems, Ancient
and Modern, quickened with Metrical Illustrations. Much of
Wither's poetry is beautiful, but at times he shows a lamentable
lack of good taste. ' The vice of Wither,' says Mr. Shaw, ' as it
was generally of the literature of his age, was a passion for in-
genious turns and unexpected conceits, which bear the same
relation to really beautiful thought that plays upon words do to
true wit.'

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 243

Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) was the author of a heroic
poem called Gondibert and of some miscellaneous verses. He was
remarkable in his day as a dramatic writer of great power. His
poems, however, are now almost forgotten. Gondibert is a
monotonous work which is written in ' a peculiar four-lined stanza
with alternate rhymes, afterwards employed by Dryden in his
Annus Mirabilis.' Critics have varied strangely in their estimate
of its merits. It is redeemed from absolute oblivion by its pre-
face, which is still looked upon as ' highly creditable to him for
judgment, taste, and feeling.'

Sir John Suckling (1609-1641) was an excellent specimen of
the Cavalier poet. His career was most romantic and adven-
turous. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and
on the death of his father in 1627, he ' set off upon his travels.'
He fought in many battles under the King of Sweden, and re-
turned to be a brilliant luminary of the Court of Charles I. He
was accounted the best bowler and card-player in England.
Joining in a scheme to enable Straff ord to escape from the Tower,
he was detected, and fled to France, where he died. Suckling
was an admirable writer of ' occasional verses/ His works
consist of four plays, and a number of short miscellaneous poems.
He is chiefly remembered now, perhaps, for his Ballad on a
Wedding, which is a lively and graceful example of his best style.
Of one well-known verse in this poem, Mr. Chambers remarks
that it has never -been excelled. The verse is as follows :

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.

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) affords another example of a
Cavalier poet. The son of Sir William Lovelace, he was educated
at Oxford. He was remarkable for personal beauty as well as
for his literary attainments. He was cast into prison by the
Long Parliament for delivering a petition praying for. the restora-
tion of the King. Released on heavy bail, he served for awhile
with the French army, and was wounded. On his return in 1648,
he was re-incarcerated. In prison he wrote a number of poems
which he published in 1649 under the title of Lucasta : Odes,
Sonnets, Songs, etc. He was disappointed in a love affair, and died

16— 2

244 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

in extreme poverty. Lovelace's poetry is not of a very high order,
though sometimes it rises above the level of the commonplace.

Richard Crashaw (circa 1613-1649) was the son of a clergyman
attached to the Temple Church, London. He was educated at
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, being elected a scholar of that
foundation in 1632. He subsequently became a Fellow of Peter-
house in 1637. In the Puritan troubles he was dismissed from
his fellowship, went to France, and embraced the Roman Catholic
faith. He was promoted to be a Canon of Loretto and secretary
to a Cardinal, and held these preferments until his death.
Crashaw' s poetry is very melodious and rich in imagery. He
was essentially a religious poet. He published, while at Cam-
bridge, a number of Latin poems, one of which contains the
beautiful line on the miracle of turning the water into wine :

Lympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit,

which is translated :

The modest water saw its God and blushed.

He published in 1646 a volume of poems in English entitled
Steps to the Temple, which is of a deep moral tone. Music's
Duel is a poem borrowed from the Contention between a Nightin-
gale and a Musician, by Famianus Strada. The following, from
his Lines on a Prayer-Book sent to Mrs. R., will give some idea
of the piety of the poet's muse :

Only be sure

The hands be pure
That hold these weapons, and the eyes

Those of turtles, chaste and true,
Wakeful and wise,

Here is a friend that shall fight for you.
Hold but this book before your heart,
Let Prayer alone to play his part.

But oh ! the heart

That studies this high art

Must be a sure housekeeper,

And yet no sleeper.

It has often been regretted that his life was not a longer and
happier one, realizing his own ideal of

A happy soul, that all the way
To Heaven hath a Summer's day.

John Cleveland (1613-1658) was the son of a clergyman who was
Rector of a parish in Leicestershire. He was educated at

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 245

Cambridge, and joined the King's army during the Civil War.
He was distinguished as ' the loudest and most strenuous poet of
the royal cause/ and wrote a scathing satire on the Scots in the
year 1647. He was imprisoned in 1655, but was set free by the
Protector, and died three years after his release. His poetry is
far-fetched and extravagant in conception, but there are some fine
passages to be found in it. He wrote an Elegy on the Archbishop
of Canterbury, from which we quote these lines as typical of his
best style :

How could success such villainies applaud ?
The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud.
The twins of public rage adjudged to die
For treasons they should act by prophecy.
The facts were done before the laws were made,
The trump turned up after the game was played.
Be dull, great spirits, and forbear to climb,
For worth is sin, and eminence a crime.
No churchman can be innocent and high ;
'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry.

It has been said that Butler was indebted to Cleveland for some
passages in Hudibras. This poet's love-verses are amongst the
most poetical of his compositions.

John Chalkhill (1599-1679) was the author of a pastoral romance
which was published in 1683 by Izaak Walton, and bearing the
title Thealma and Clearchus. It is written in the heroic couplet.
The scene is laid in Arcadia, and the poem contains a description
of the Golden Age, which was succeeded by the Age of Iron.
Our dates are taken from the tomb of Chalkhill in Winchester
Cathedral, though Walton calls him ' an acquaintant and friend
of Edmund Spenser,' who died in 1599, and speaks of him as
being dead in 1678. From these circumstances it has been
thought by some that Walton wrote the poem himself, and by
others that, being ninety years old at the time, his memory was
defective.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), though chiefly celebrated as a
politician and prose writer, is worthy of honourable mention as a
poet. He was the son of the Rector of Winestead, a parish in
Lincolnshire. He was educated at Cambridge. In the earlier
part of his life he was in the diplomatic service, and was attached
for awhile to the British Embassy at Constantinople. In 1657,
through the influence of Milton, he was appointed to help the great

246 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

poet in the office of Latin Secretary. His chief poems consist of
a piece entitled The Lamentation of a Nymph on the Death of her
Fawn, a Song of the Emigrants in Bermuda, and Thoughts in a
Garden. It is thought that some lines of Marvell's song on The
Emigrants were in the mind of Thomas Moore when he wrote his
Canadian Boat Song. Marvell's lines are these :

Thus sang they in the English boat
A holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) was born in Wales, a circumstance
which, it appears, led him to describe himself as a Silurist.
Campbell says of him that ' he is one of the harshest even of the
inferior order of the school of conceit ; but he has some scattered
thoughts that meet our eye amid his harsh pages, like wild-flowers
on a barren heath.' This is looked upon by other critics as a
harsh and somewhat unjust verdict, and, indeed, it does not
convey an adequate idea of the quality of the poet's verse. A
volume of poems of his composition was published by a friend in
1651, under the title Olor Iscanus. His Sacred Poems, published
in his later years, are decidedly his best. His metre and rhythm
are constantly at fault, even in his best productions.

Sir Edward Sherburne (1618-1702) was born in London. He
was a Roman Catholic, and firmly attached to the fortunes of
Charles I., who made him Commissary-General of the Artillery,
in which capacity he witnessed the Battle of Edge Hill. He
afterwards attended Charles to Oxford, where he received the
degree of M.A. He was knighted in 1682. His works consist of
Poems and Translations (1651), a Translation of Seneca's Tragedies.
and The Sphere of Manilius. His writings are marked by con-
siderable genius, and his sacred poems are often elegant.

Edmund Smith (Neile) (circa 1668-1710) was a wit, scholar,
critic, and poet. His real name was Neale, but he lost his
father in infancy, and was adopted by a brother-in-law of his
father, named Smith. By the latter gentleman he was brought
up, and placed at Westminster School under Dr. Busby, who
considered him one of his best scholars. He assumed the name
of his benefactor, and under that name was elected to a student-
ship at Christ Church, Oxford. He was the author of a tragedy

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 247

entitled Phczdra and Hippolytus, an excellent translation of
Longinus on the Sublime, and some very creditable poems.
His biographer, Oldisworth, tells us that he commenced a
spirited translation of the works of Pindar, which it is to be
regretted he did not live to complete. His carelessness in dress
procured him the nickname of ' Captain Ragg.' Habits of
intemperance and great personal imprudence reduced him to
penury. He died at Hartham, Wiltshire, in 1710.

George Stepney (1663-1707) was descended from an ancient
family settled in Prendergast, in Pembrokeshire. He was born
in Westminster, and was educated at Trinity College, Cam-
bridge. There he acquired the friendship of the Earl of Halifax,
who afterwards procured him some important diplomatic ap-
pointments. Queen Anne sent him on an embassy to Holland
in 1706. He died soon after his return in the following year,
and lies buried in Westminster Abbey, with a somewhat pompous
inscription over his remains. His poems, which seldom, if ever,
rise above mediocrity, consist of a translation of the eighth
Satire of Juvenal, Imitations of Horace, The Austrian Eagle, On
Dreams, etc.

The Rev. Richard Duke (died in 1710) is mentioned by
Dr. Johnson. His Poems on Several Occasions were published,
in conjunction with those of Roscommon, in 1717. They were
not very distinguished.

SCOTTISH POETS

Sir Robert Ayton (1570-1638) was a Gentleman of the Bed-
chamber to King James I. and Private Secretary to the Queen.
He was also an intimate friend of Ben Jonson. He was a son of
Ayton of Kinaldie, and was born in Fifeshire. His poems are
written in pure and graceful English. The following lines. On
Woman's Inconstancy, give a good idea of his style :

I loved thee once, I'll love no more ;
Thine be the grief as is the blame ;
Thou art not as thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same ?
He that can love unloved again
Hath better store of love than brain :
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.

248 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The Earl of Ancrum (1578-1654) was a younger son of Sir
Andrew Ker o* Ferniehurst, and a friend of King James and of
King Charles I. He wrote some sonnets which have been highly
praised.

The Earl of Stirling (1580-1640) was the author of a number of
poems which gained considerable favour. A complete edition
of his works was published in 1637, entitled Recreations with the
Muses. It contains four tragedies, one on the subject of Julius
Ccesar, together with a sacred poem on The Day of Judgment, in
twelve parts, a poem entitled Jonathan, and another addressed
to Prince Henry, a son of King James. He addressed a pleasing
sonnet to Aurora, a lady whom he had ' loved and lost.' The
Earl was Secretary of State for Scotland from 1626 to 1641,
during which period King Charles tried to establish episcopacy
in the North. Campbell thinks there is ' elegance of .expression '
in some of Stirling's shorter poems.

William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585-1649), a friend of
Ben Jonson and of Drayton, was the most distinguished of the
Scottish poets of this century. He was a son of Sir John Drum-
mond, a Gentleman-Usher to King James. He published in 1613
Tears on the Death of Mceliades, by whom is meant Henry, Prince
of Wales. In 1616 there appeared a volume of Poems, containing
miscellaneous verses of very considerable merit. His best poem
was issued in 1617. It is called Forth Feasting, a Panegyric to
the King's Most Excellent Majesty, being lines of congratulation
to King James on his return to his native country. Drummond' s
Sonnets are excellent, an^ are described by Hallam as ' polished
and elegant, free from conceit and bad taste, in pure, unblemished
English.' The following is an example of his best style :

I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought
In Time's great periods, shall return to nought ;

The fairest states have fatal nights and days.

I know that all the Muse's heavenly lays

With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,

That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.
I know frail beauty's like the purple flower,

To which one morn oft birth and death affords,

That love a jarring is of mind's accords,

Where sense and will bring under reason's power :

Know what I list, all this cannot me move,

But that, alas ! I both must write and love.

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 249

James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1612-1650), wrote some
verses ' irregular in style, but occasionally happy and vigorous
in expression, and characteristic of that daring, romantic spirit
he displayed both as Covenanter and as Cavalier.' His poem
written after sentence of death had been passed upon him is
particularly weird and gruesome.

Robert Sempill (1595-1659) was a Royalist who fought on the
side of Charles I. He came of a poetical family, and wrote some
poems, including The Piper of Kilbarchan, the style of which was
copied by Burns and Ramsay.

William Cleland (circa 1661-1689) was "the author of a poem
called Hallo, my Fancy, and ' a Hudibrastic satire on the Jacobite
army known as The Highland Host,' which was published in 1678.

Francis Sempill (died between 1680 and 1685) was a song- writer.
He was a son of the above-mentioned Robert Sempill.

IRISH POETS

Thomas Southerne (1659-1746) was a dramatic poet who wrote
ten plays of very unequal merit. Only two, indeed, are remem-
bered as giving a fair idea of the extent of his genius. These
are Isabella ; or, The Fatal Marriage, and a pathetic drama
called Oroonoko. Southerne was born in Dublin and educated
at Trinity College, but he migrated to England in 1678, and
studied law at the Middle Temple. Subsequently he went
into the army, and obtained his commission as Captain under
the Duke of York, at the time of the Duke of Monmouth's
insurrection. It is thought that he was at the Battle of
Sedgemoor. Oroonoko is the story of an African prince who
was stolen from his kingdom of Angola, and carried away to an
island in the West Indies. Mr. Hallam remarks that Southerne
was the first English writer to denounce the traffic in slaves and
the cruelties of their West Indian bondage. ' Tenderness and
pathos,' says Mr. Shaw, ' may be asserted to be the primary
characteristic of Southerne's dramatic genius.' We quote the
following lines as a slight example :

Imoinda. How, how shall I receive you, how be worthy
Of such endearments, all this tenderness ?
These are the transports of prosperity,
When fortune smiles upon us.

250 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Oroonoko. Let the fools
Who follow fortune live upon her smiles ;
All our prosperity is placed in love ;
We have enough of that to make us happy.
This little spot of earth you stand upon
Is more to me than the extended plains
Of my great father's kingdom. Here I reign
In full delights, in joys to power unknown ;
Your love my empire, and your heart my throne.

Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1621-1679), was the author of several
poems and plays. Of his poems, the chief are : A Poem on His
Majesty's Happy Restoration, A Poem on the Death of Cowley,
Poems on the Fasts and Festivals of the Church.

FROM ' POEM ON THE DEATH OF COWLEY '

Oh, how severely man is used by Fate !

The covetous toil long for an estate ;

And having got more than their life can spend,

They may bequeath it to a son or friend :

But learning, in which none can have a share,

Unless they climb to it by time and care,

Learning, the truest wealth which man can have,

Does, with his body, perish in his grave.

To tenements of clay it is confm'd,

Though 'tis the noblest purchase of the mind :

Oh ! why can we thus leave our friends possest

Of all our acquisitions but the best ?

Still when we study Cowley, we lament,
That to the world he was no longer lent ;
Who, like a lightning, to our eyes was shown,
So bright he shin'd, and was so quickly gone.
Sure he rejoic'd to see his flame expire.
Since he himself could not have rais'd it higher ;
For when wise poets can no higher fly,
They would; like saints, in their perfection die.

The Hon. Mrs. Monk (1677-1715), daughter of Viscount Moles-
worth, and wife of George Monk, Esq., was born in Dublin in the
year 1677. While yet a child she displayed much ability for
learning, and soon acquired a knowledge of Latin, Spanish, and
Italian. After her death, in 1715, her poems were published by
her father, under the title of Marinda : Poems and Translations
upon Several Occasions. One of her biographers says that her
poems and translations ' show the true spirit and numbers of
poetry, delicacy of turns, and justness of thought and expression.'

ON PROVIDENCE

As a kind mother with indulgent eye
Views her fair charge and melts with sympathy,
And one's dear face imprints with kisses sweet,
One to her bosom clasps, one on her knee
Softly sustains in pleasing dignity,

MINOR POETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 251

And one permits to cling about her feet ;

And reads their various wants and each request

In look or action, or in sigh express' d :

This little supplicant in gracious style

She answers, that she blesses with a smile ;

Or if she blames their suit, or if approves,

And whether pleased or grieved, yet still she loves

With like regard high providence Divine
Watches affectionate o'er human race :
One feeds, one comforts, does to all incline,
And each assists with kind parental care ;
Or once denying us some needful grace,
Only denies to move an ardent prayer ;
Or courted for imaginary wants,
Seems to deny, but in denying grants.

Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) was born and educated in Dublin.
His father was the owner of large estates in Ireland. Thomas
took Holy Orders, and eventually became Archdeacon of Clogher.
He was buried, after a sad and chequered career, at Chester.
His memory has been honoured by a biography from the pen of
Oliver Goldsmith, who was ' proud of his distinguished country-
man,' considering him the last of the great school of Pope and
Swift. His works are miscellaneous, consisting of poems, songs,
hymns, translations, epistles, etc. His chief poem is called The
Hermit, a parable or story in rhyme, taken from the Gesta
Romanorum. Pope called this poem ' very good.' His Night-
piece on Death was ' indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to Gray's
celebrated Elegy,' but this will be matter for surprise to most
people who compare the two poems for themselves. Yet the
lines of Parnell are beautiful enough, as the following extract
will show :

How deep yon azure dyes the sky !

Where orbs of gold unnumbered lie ;

While through their ranks, in silver pride,

The nether crescent seems to glide.

The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,

The lake is smooth and clear beneath,

Where once again the spangled show

Descends to meet our eyes below.

The grounds, which on the right aspire,

In dimness from the view retire :

The left presents a place of graves,

Whose wall the silent water laves.

That steeple guides thy doubtful sight

Along the livid gleams of night.

There pass, with melancholy state,

By all the solemn heaps of fate,

And think, as softly sad you tread

Above the venerable dead,

' Time was, like thee, they life possessed,

And time shall be that thou shalt rest.'

252 1

Nahum Tate (1652-1715), son of the Rev. Dr. Faithful Tate,
was born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin.
He succeeded Shadwell as Poet-Laureate in 1692, which dignity
he held until his death in 1715. His poetical works include
Panacea, a poem on the prosaic subject of tea ; a number of birth-
day odes ; and a metrical version of the Psalms, executed in con-
junction with the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Brady, Chaplain to King
William and Queen Mary.

Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1634-1685), was nephew
and godson to the celebrated Earl of Strafford. He was the
author of a poetical Essay on Translated Verse, a translation of
Horace's Art of Poesy, and some minor verses. He is spoken of
with favour by Alexander Pope, who says of him :

In all Charles's days
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays.

He died of gout in 1685, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Dr. Johnson says that at the moment in which he expired he
quoted these two lines of his own Dies Irce :

My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in the end.

WELSH POETS

Thomas Jones (1590-1620) was a celebrated antiquary, poet,
and genealogist. He was born in Tregaron, in Cardiganshire.
Being a man of superior information, he was looked upon by the
vulgar as a magician.

Hugh Morris (1622-1709) was a poet of some eminence, and one
of the best song-writers that have appeared in Wales. He was
born in the county of Denbigh. A complete edition of his works
was published by the Rev. Walter Davies in 1820.

Rees Prichard (1579-1644) was an eminent poet, and the author
of the well-known Canwyll y Cymry. He was educated at Jesus
College, Oxford, and became Chancellor of St. David's Cathedral.

GREATER POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS

ALEXANDER POPE

1688-1744

' I LISPED in numbers, for the numbers came.' Such were the
words in which Alexander Pope announced to the world the now
well-known fact that he began to write poetry very shortly after
he had left the nursery. His name stands far above all poets of
his time.

Pope was born in London in 1688. His father was a member
of an old Roman Catholic family with respectable traditions.
Having achieved some commercial success as a linen-draper, he
was enabled to retire to a comfortable home at Benfield, near
Windsor, while the future poet was yet a boy. In this rural home,
situated in a lovely neighbourhood, Alexander had opportunities
for feeding his imagination and storing his mind with facts and
fancies drawn direct from Nature, whose gentle teaching he began
early to imbibe and assimilate. It soon became evident to all
who knew him that he was possessed of more than ordinary
powers — in fact, that he was a genius. His earliest tutor was
the priest of the family, and he also received some little education
at two Roman Catholic schools, at one of which he made his master
the subject of an early attempt at verse in the shape of a lampoon.
His precocity was from the first nothing short of extraordinary,,
and he is said to have been full of literary ambition from the
moment he learnt to read. His childish admiration was lavished
on Dryden. Indeed, he was so possessed by the spirit of enthu-
siasm concerning the illustrious veteran that in his thirteenth

253

254 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

year he induced a friend to go with him to Wills' Coffee-house,
which Dryden was in the habit of frequenting, in order that he
might obtain a glimpse of the great poet. Dryden's death took
place in the same year. More fortunate than Ovid, he was en-
couraged by his father in his literary tastes, and even helped by
him. He may be said to have begun his career as a poet at the
age of sixteen, by the composition of a series of Pastorals^ His
translations of Statins were published in 1705. In the same year
were issued some modernized versions from Chaucer. It would
seem from this that he was anxious to institute a parallel between
himself and Dryden. The Story of January and May, and the
Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale were the names of these early
productions of his pen. The life of Pope, like that of Dryden, is
practically the history of the period of English literature in which
he lived. Like Dryden, he was constantly involved in literary
squabbles. He was associated, either as friend or adversary,
with Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Bolingbroke, Addison, Gay, Swift,
Steele, Warburton, Dennis, Cibber, and Garth. He has: — and
in this, again, he resembles his great master — immortalized in the
Dunciad a good many literary names that would otherwise have
been doomed to oblivion. From the year 1709 he was untiring
in the field of poetical composition, and he rose rapidly to the
highest place amongst the poets of his time. The Essay on
Criticism, which was written in 1709, was the first to make his
reputation secure as a writer of the highest rank. In 1711
appeared the Temple of Fame, which is an imitation of Chaucer's
House of Fame, and to this period also belongs The Rape of the
Lock, which is said to be ' incomparably superior to every heroic
comic composition that the world has hitherto seen.' '2 The
pastoral eclogues, entitled Windsor Forest, were issued in 1713,
and a volume of poems in 1717. By the year 1720 he had trans-
lated the whole of the Iliad into English verse, and in 1725 the
poet completed a translation of the Odyssey.

Pope's appearance was against him. He was in stature an
absolute dwarf, and so deformed was he that his life has been
described with some truth as ' one long disease.' Indeed, his life
was preserved only by the most careful and constant nursing,
and to follow a profession of any kind was quite out of the ques-

1 Published in 1700.

2 Shaw's ' English Literature,' by Sir W. Smith, p. 288.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 255

tion. Though his constitution was so delicate, he was neverthe-
less an interesting and pleasing child, with a goodly, if not a beau-
tiful, countenance, and his voice was so sweet and musical that
it won for him the name of ' the little nightingale.'

Pope made a fortune by his translations of the Iliad and the
Odyssey. ' Not sixty years before,' says Dr. Collier, ' a blind old
man (Milton) in the same great city had sold the greatest epic
of modern days for £18. Pope, whose poetic fame grows pale
before the splendour of Milton's genius, as the stars die out before
the sun, pocketed more than £8,000 for a clever translation.
Like Dryden translating Virgil, Pope did little more than repro-
duce the sense of Homer's verse in smooth and neatly-balanced
English couplets, leaving the spirit behind in the glorious rough
old Greek, that tumbles on the ear like the roar of a winter sea.'
The great scholar Bentley is said to have remarked upon the
volumes which were sent to him by the poet, ' It is a pretty poem,
Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.'

Pope was assisted by Fenton and Broome in his translation of
the Odyssey. In 1728 he published the Dunciad. Lewis Theo-
bald was the hero in the first instance, but when the fourth book
was published, in 1742, under the influence of Warburton, the
King of the Dunces was not Theobald, but Colley Cibber. This
has been called ' the fiercest and finest of Pope's satires.' * It
was in conversation with Bolingbroke that he conceived the idea
of the Essay on Man. It is in four epistles, which are addressed
to Bolingbroke. In the first Man is reviewed in his relation to
the Universe, in the second in his relation to himself, in the third
in his relation to Society, and in the fourth in relation to his
pursuit of happiness. In this poem the writer gives unmistakable
proof of his marvellous power of handling an abstract philoso-
phical subject. The verse is smooth and melodious throughout,
and the illustrations are drawn with consummate skill.

The Rape of the Lock is perhaps the best-known and most
popular of the works of Pope. The subject of the poem is
supplied by the frolicsome conduct of Lord Petre, a man of
fashion in the time of Queen Anne, and attached to the Court, in
cutting off a ringlet from the head of a charming and beautiful
young Maid of Honour named Arabella Fermor. Pope showed
the poem at first to Addison, who pronounced it ' a delicious little

' Incomparably the fiercest, most sweeping, and most powerful literary
satire that exists in the whole range of literature.' — SHAW.

256 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

thing,' and advised him not to alter it in any way, lest he should
spoil it. This advice Pope did not altogether abide by. ' For-
tunately for his glory, though the critic's counsel was as prudent
as it certainly was sincere, he incorporated into his poem the
delicious supernatural agency of the sylphs and gnomes, beings
which he borrowed from the fantastic theories of Paracelsus and
the Rosicrucian philosophers.' In five cantos the poet tells the
woes of Belinda, and gives the world an unequalled description
of the lives and doings of people of fashion in the reign of Queen
Anne. The end of the ringlet, the theft of which gave occasion
for the writing of this inimitable satire, is a place amongst the
stars of heaven, where, if we may trust the poem, it has given
forth its lustre ever since as the constellation known as the Tress
of Berenice.

The dwarfish poet was not without his own romance. He was
consumed by an unconcealed passion for the Lady Mary Montagu,
the famous letter-writer. Love in time turned to hate, the result
of cold contempt on the part of the lady, who had occasion to
speak of her former lover in late years as ' the wicked wasp of
Twickenham.' On the 3oth of May, 1744, literally worn away by
asthma and various other disorders, Pope passed away at the villa
at Twickenham which he had purchased on the death of his father.

No character has been more canvassed than that of Pope, both
from a personal and a literary point of view. As a man, he was'
a strange mixture. Peevishness, childishness, malignity, selfish-
ness, avarice, duplicity, meanness, all these are amongst the
faults that have been laid to his charge. On the other hand,
we are told that he was remarkable for such traits as gentleness,
generosity, tolerance, piety, candour, and beautiful filial affection.
The chief biographies of Pope are those by Johnson, Warburton,
Bowles, Roscoe, and Warton. For a general estimate of his
poetry, Johnson's beautiful parallel between him and Dry den
should be carefully studied.

FROM THE ' ESSAY ON CRITICISM '

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ;

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar ;

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 257

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line too labours, and the words move slow ;

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,

And bid alternate passions fall and rise !

While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove

Now burns with glory, and then melts with love :

Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow ;

Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow :

Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,

And the world's victor stood subdued by sound !

The pow'r of music all our hearts allow.

And what Timotheus was, is DRYDEN now.

FROM 'THE RAPE OF THE LOCK'
THE TOILET

And now, unveil' d, the toilet stands display'd,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores,
With head uncover'd, the cosmetic powers.
A heavenly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears ;
Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling, begins the sacred rites of Pride.
Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here
The various offerings of the world appear ;
From each she nicely culls, with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.

Here files of pins extend their shining rows.
Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms ;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face ;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy sylphs1 surround their darling care :
These set the head, and those divide the hair ;
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown ;
And Betty's praised for labours not her own.

FROM THE 'ESSAY ON MAN'
UNIVERSALITY OF GOD IN NATURE

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ;
That, chang'd through all, and yet in all the same ;
Great in the Earth, as in th' ethereal frame ;

1 Spirits of the air, in the Rosicrucian philosophy, from the Greek
silphe, a kind of beetle, or a moth supposed to renew its youth like the
phoenix. •

258 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Warms in the Sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent ;
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part.
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns :
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small ;
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all.

SYNTHESIS OF HUMAN LOVE

God loves from whole to parts : but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake :
The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds ;
Another still, and still another spreads ;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace ;
His country next ; and next all human race ;
Wide and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mind
Take every creature in, of every kind ;
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,
And Heaven beholds its image in his breast.

REV. EDWARD YOUNG, D.C.L.
1681-1765

EDWARD YOUNG was a distinguished writer of sacred poetry.
He was the only son of the Rev. Dr. Edward Young, Rector of
Upham, and was born in June, 1681. He was educated at Win-
chester and at New College, Oxford. At the University he ob-
tained a law-fellowship in 1708, and proceeded to the degree of
Doctor of Civil Law in 1719. At first his intention was to follow
the legal profession, but this idea he abandoned, and took Holy
Orders. One of his early examiners, Tindal, said of him, ' The
other boys I can always answer, because I know whence they have
their arguments ; but that fellow Young is always pestering me
with something of his own.' He tried unsuccessfully to enter
Parliament.

Young began his career as a poet in 1712 with an Epistle to
the Right Hon. George Lansdowne. ' This adulatory poem was
composed in the same servile spirit as characterized many of
Young's subsequent performances. To lavish praise upon the
great, and to seek for place and preferment, distinguished him
from the commencement of his progress in life until its close.'

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 259

Between the years 1725 and 1728 seven satires were issued from
the press, entitled Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, which
brought him into considerable prominence, and won for him the
praise of Dr. Johnson and Joseph Warton. It is written in a
manner which bears some resemblance to that of Pope, though
not equal in merit to any of the greater poet's masterpieces. In
referring the vices and follies of mankind chiefly to the vanity and
the foolish desire of applause, Young exhibits a false and narrow
view of human motives ; but there are many passages in
the epistles which compose the satire that exhibit strong
powers of observation and description, and a keen and vigorous
expression which, though sometimes degenerating into that
tendency to paradox and epigram which are the prevailing defect
of Young's genius, are not unworthy of his great model. The
passage describing the character of women, may be compared,
without altogether losing in the parallel, to Pope's admirable
work on the same subject.

The first parts of Night Thoughts, the exquisite poem with
which the name of Young must ever be most closely identified,
appeared in 1742. The conception of this work is said to have
taken its rise in the continued misfortunes which befell its author
in his own family circle. He had married a young widow, Lady
Elizabeth Lee, in 1731. She was the daughter of the Earl of
Lichfield, and by her the poet had a son whose irregularities
caused his parents a great deal of sorrow. Further, Lady Eliza-
beth had two daughters by her first marriage, both of whom died
within a short time, and, finally, the unhappy poet was bereaved
of his wife also. The poem, which establishes the claim of its
author to be called the most illustrious of the secondary poets of
his epoch, has been universally admired and praised, in spite of
that suggestion of gloom which is to be accounted for in the main
by the facts just noted. Its critics have been numerous, but
they have been kind to one who deserves kindness at their hands.
Dr. Aikin, in his Select Lives of the British Poets, says : ' It imitates
no one, and has no imitators. Its spirit, indeed, is gloomy and
severe, and its theology awful and overwhelming ; yet it presents
reflections which are inculcated with a force of language and
sublimity of imagination almost unparalleled.' Dr. Johnson has
expressed his opinion that ' the author has exhibited a very wide
display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and

17 — 2

260 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

striking allusions — a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility
of f ancy'scatters flowers of every hue and of every colour. The
excellence of this work is not exactness ; particular lines are not to
be regarded ; the power is in the whole, and in the whole there is a
magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantations, the mag-
nificence of vast extent and endless diversity.' Of more modern
critics, we may quote the Words of Campbell. He says : ' The
reader most sensitive to this eminent poet's faults must, however,
have felt that there is in him a spark of originality, which is never
long extinguished, however far it may be from vivifying the
entire mass of his poetry. Many and exquisite are his touches of
sublime expression, of profound reflection, and of striking imagery.
It is recalling but a few of these to allude to his description, in the
eighth book, of the man whose thoughts are not of this world, to
his simile of the traveller at the opening of the ninth book, to
his spectre of the antediluvian world, and to some parts of his
very unequal description of the conflagration ; above all, to that
noble and familiar image,

When final ruin fiercely drives
Her ploughshare o'er creation.

It is true that he seldom, if ever, maintains a flight of poetry long
free from oblique associations ; but he has individual passages
. which philosophy might make her texts, and experience select
for her mottoes.'

Young had a happy method of saying things in language which
challenges the memory to forget. His verse is full of ' wise
saws ' which linger in the mind and spring to the lips as appro-
priate quotations. ' Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep ';
' Man makes a death which Nature never made'; ' A Christian
is the highest style of man'; 'Be wise to-day: 'tis madness to
defer'; ' A deathbed's a detector of the heart'; ' All men think
all men mortal but themselves'; ' Procrastination is the thief of
time'; ' By night an Atheist half believes a God,' are proverbs,
as are many other isolated lines from this great poem.

It is said that Young's anxiety for advancement did not cease
to exist as he grew older. He was endowed by the Duke of
Wharton with an annuity of £200. When he took Holy Orders,
in his fiftieth year, he was appointed Rector of Welwyn by
his college, and was made Chaplain to King George II. Yet at

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 261

the age of eighty he solicited further advancement from Arch-
bishop Seeker, and was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the
Princess Dowager of Wales. When on his deathbed he refused
to see his profligate son, though he sent him his forgiveness, and
made him his heir. He died at the age of eighty-three, in the
year 1765.

APOSTROPHE TO NIGHT

0 majestic Night !

Nature's great ancestor ! Day's elder born I
And fated to survive the transient sun !
By mortals and immortals seen with awe !
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns,
An azure zone thy waist ; clouds, in heaven's loom
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,
In ample folds of drapery divine,
Thy flowing mantle form, and, heaven throughout,
• Voluminously pour thy pompous train :
Thy gloomy grandeurs — Nature's most august,
Inspiring aspect — claim a grateful verse,
And, like a sable curtain starr'd with gold.
Drawn o'er my labours past, shall clothe the scene.

THOUGHTS ON TIME

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss : to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

1 feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours.

Where. are they ? With the years beyond the flood

It is the signal that demands dispatch :

How much is to be done ? My hopes and fears

Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge

Look down — on what ? A fathomless abyss !

A. dread eternity ! how surely mine !

And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour ?

O time ! than gold more sacred ; more a load

Than lead to fools, and fools reputed wise.

What moment granted man without account ?

What years are squandered, wisdom's debt unpaid !

Our wealth in days all due to that discharge.

Haste ! haste ! he lies in wait, he's at the door ,

Insidious Death ; should his strong hand arrest

No composition sets the prisoner free

Eternity's inexorable chain

Fast binds, and vengeance claims the full arreai

THE EMPTINESS OF RICHES

Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine ?
Can we-dig peace or wisdom from the mine ?
Wisdom to gold prefer, for 'tis much less
To make our fortune than our happiness :
That happiness which great ones often see.
With rage and wonder, in a low degree.

262 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Themselves unbless'd. The poor are only poor.
But what are they who droop amid their store ?
Nothing is meaner than a wretch of state ;
The happy only are the truly great.
Peasants enjoy like appetites with kings,
And those best satisfied with cheapest things.
Could both our Indies buyjbut one new sense,
Our envy would be due to large expense ;
Since not, those pomps which to the great belong
Are but poor arts to mark them from the throng
, See how they beg an alms of Flattery ;

They languish ! oh, support them with a lie !

A decent competence we fully taste ;

It strikes our sense, and gives a constant feast ;

More we perceive by dint of thought alone ;

The rich must labour to possess their own,

To feel their great abundance, and request

Their humble friends to help them to be blest ;

To see their treasure, hear their glory told,

And aid the wretched impotence of gold.

But some, great souls ! and touch'd with warmth divine,

Give gold a price, and teach its beams to shine ;

All hoarded treasures they repute a load,

Nor think their wealth their own, till well bestow'd

Grand reservoirs of public happiness,

Through secret streams diffusively they bless,

And, while their bounties glide, conceal' d from view,

Relieve our wants, and spare our blushes too.

PROCRASTINATION

Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer :
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
•— — - Procrastination is the thief of time ;

Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And io the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange ?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, ' That all men are about to live,'
For ever on the brink of being born :
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel, and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise ;
At least their own their future selves applaud ;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails •
That lodged in Fate's to wisdom they consign ,
'ihe thing they can't but purpose, they postpone
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,
A.nd scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage. When young, indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish.
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
• i At thirty, man suspects himself a fool ;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ;

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 263

At fifty, chides his infamous delay,

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ;

In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same.

And why ? Because he thinks himself immortal.

All men think all men mortal but themselves ;

Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate

Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ;

But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air.

Soon close ; where passed the shaft no trace is found,

As from the wing no scar the sky retains,

The parted wave no furrow from the keel.

So dies in human hearts the thought of death :

E'en with the tender tear which nature sheds

O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.

WILLIAM COLLINS

1721-1759

' THE defect of Collins' poetry,' says Dr. Craik, ' is that there is
too little of earth in it ; in the purity and depth of its beauty it
resembles the bright blue sky.' This can hardly be looked upon
as a serious fault, nor was the censure meant to be at all severe.
It is a concise way of summing up the failure and success of a
writer of unquestioned genius.

William Collins was born in Chichester in the year 1721. His
father followed the trade of a hatter in that city. Through
the assistance of friends the future poet was enabled to go to
Winchester School and the University of Oxford. He was elected
a scholar of Magdalen, and, having taken his degree, went to
London full of ambition to achieve literary distinction. Apart
from some triumphant successes in this direction, his career was a
miserable one. His talents were such as might, under favourable
circumstances, have raised him to the front rank of British poets,
had not a tendency to self-indulgence sapped the strength of his
mind. It is said that he had a latent tendency to madness,
which gradually developed under stress of unsatisfied ambition
until it culminated in complete and hopeless imbecility. He
died at Chichester in 1759. Dr. Johnson, who was greatly
drawn towards him as a man, though he deals with him somewhat
severely as a poet, says ' his morals were pure and his opinions
pious,' adding that ' at least he preserved the source of action
unpolluted, and his principles were never shaken,' his distinctions

264 A HISTORY OF. BRITISH POETRY

of right and wrong never being confounded. He sent for Johnson
in the midst of his malady, and was found by the great doctor
reading the New Testament, which he always carried about with
him. ' I have but one book/ said the poet, ' but it is the best.'

He first published Persian Eclogues in 1742. These are not his
best works. The flower of his poetical genius is rather to be found
in his Odes, which appeared in 1746. Mr. Spalding says of them :

' The Odes of Collins are fuller of the fine and spontaneous
enthusiasm of genius than any other poems ever written by one
who wrote so little. We close his tiny volume with the same
disappointed surprise which overcomes us when a harmonious
piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished. His range of tones
is very wide : it extends from the warmest rapture of self-
entranced imagination to a tenderness which makes some of his
verses sound like gentle weeping.'

The Passions is his most popular poem, though it cannot
critically be accounted the best. His odes on The Poetical Char-
acter and Manners are superior, and give a fuller insight into his
imaginative genius. Fear, Pity, Simplicity, and Mercy are also
amongst the subjects which his pen has smoothly and deftly
touched upon. His Ode to Evening, and Verses on the Memory of
Thomson, are likely to live as long as poetry retains its charm for
the heart and ear. The former has been compared to a melody
of Schubert for beauty and sweetness.

After his death a long ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands
was found amongst his papers. It was unfinished, but contains
many fine passages.

Poetic things without number have been said of the writings
of this unfortunate man, and amongst them is the justifiable
statement that ' the melody of his verse swells and falls like the
impulsive tones of an Eolian harp.'

In the cathedral at Chichester there is a monument by Flaxman
which represents the poet in a reclining position, with the New
Testament open before him. His lyre and one of his poems are
at his feet, neglected, and the effigies of Love and Pity are keeping
vigil.

Come, Pity, come 1 By Fancy's aid,
Ev'n now my thoughts, relenting maid !

Thy temple's pride design :
Its southern site, its truth complete,
Shall raise a wild enthusiast heat
In all who view the shrine.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 265

ODE TO PEACE

O thou, who bad'st thy turtles bear,
Swift from his grasp, thy golden hair,

And sought'st thy native skies ;
When war, by vultures drawn from far,
To Britain bent his iron car,

And bade his storms arise !

Tired of his rude tyrannic sway,
Our youth shall fix some festive day,

His sullen shrines to burn :
But thou who hear'st the turning spheres,
What sounds may charm thy partial ears,

And gain thy blest return !

O peace, thy injured robes up-bind !
O rise ! and leave not one behind

Of all thy beamy train ;
The British lion, goddess sweet.
Lies stretched on earth to kiss thy feet,

And own thy holier reign.

Let others court thy transient smile,
But come to grace thy western isle,

By warlike honour led ;
And, while around her ports rejoice,
While all her sons adore thy choice,

With him for ever wed !

ODE TO A LADY

ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL CHARLES Ross, IN THE ACTION AT
FONTENOY. WRITTEN MAY, 1745.

While, lost to all his former mirth,
Britannia's genius bends to earth,

And mourns the fatal day :
While, stained with blood, he strives to tear
Unseemly from his sea-green hair

The wreaths of cheerful May :

The thoughts which musing pity pays,
And fond remembrance loves to raise,

Your faithful hours attend ;
Still fancy, to herself unkind,
Awakes to grief the softened mind,

And points the bleeding friend.

By rapid Scheld's descending wave
His country's vows shall bless the grave,

Where'er the youth is laid :
That sacred spot the village hind
With every sweetest turf shall bind,

And peace protect the shade.

O'er him, whose doom thy virtues grieve.
Aerial forms shall sit at eve,

And bend the pensive head !
And, fallen to save his injured land,
Imperial honour's awful hand

Shall point his lonely bed 1

266 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The warlike dead of every age,
Who fill the fair recording page,

Shall leave their sainted rest ;
And, half reclining on his spear,
Each wondering chief by turns appear,

To hail the blooming guest :

Old Edward's sons unknown to yield,
Shall crowd from Cressy's laurelled field,

And gaze with fixed delight ;
Again for Britain's wrongs they feel,
Again they snatch the gleamy steel,

And wish the avenging fight.

If, weak to soothe so soft a heart,
These pictured glories naught impart.

To dry thy constant tear :
If yet, in sorrow's distant eye,
Exposed and pale thou see'st him lie,

Wild war insulting near :

Where'er from time thou court's! relief.
The muse shall still, with social grief,

Her gentlest promise keep ;
Even humbled Harting's cottage vale
Shall learn the sad repeated tale,

And bid her shepherds weep.

ODE IN 1746

How sleep the brave who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blessed !
When spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung ;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung ;
There honour comes, a pilgrim grey.
To bless the turf that wraps their clay ;
And freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there !

ODE TO MERCY

STROPHE

O thou, who sitt'st a smiling bride

By valour's armed and awful side,
Gentlest of sky-born forms, and best adored ;

Who oft with songs, divine to hear,

Winn'st from his fatal grasp the spear.
And hid'st in wreaths of flowers his bloodless sword !

Thou who, amidst the deathful field,

By godlike chiefs alone beheld,

Oft with thy bosom bare art found.
Pleading for him, the youth who sinks to ground :

See, mercy, see, with pure and loaded hands,

Before thy shrine my country's genius stands,
And decks thy altar still, though pierced with many a wound.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 267

ANTISTROPHE

When he whom even our joys provoke,

The fiend of nature, joined his yoke,
And rushed in wrath to make our isle his prey ;

Thy form, from out thy sweet abode,

O'ertook him on his blasted road,
And stopped his wheels, and looked his rage away.

I see recoil his sable steeds,

That bore him swift to salvage deeds,
Thy tender melting eyes they own ;
O maid, for all thy love to Britain shown,

Where justice bars her iron tower,

To thee we build a roseate bower ;
Thou, thou shalt rule our queen, and share our monarch's throne !

THOMAS CHATTERTON

1752-1770

HISTORY has little more melancholy to record than the brief
career of Thomas Chatterton, who died by his own hand before he
had completed his eighteenth year. He was born in Bristol in
1752, b'eing the posthumous son of a schoolmaster, who also held
the office of subchanter at the Cathedral. His education was
received at a Blue-Coat school, but from this he passed to be
apprenticed to an attorney at the early age of fifteen years. His
native city abounds in remains of medieval buildings, and one
of the most historic and notable of these is the magnificent parish
church of St. Mary-Redcliffe. Chatterton's grandfather had been
sexton of this ancient structure, and doubtless the lad was early
attracted to a study of its interesting history, as also to that of
other monuments of a past age in Bristol. He became strongly
addicted to the study of heraldry, architecture, black-letter, and
old literature, and to English antiquities in general. His was
one of the most wonderfully precocious minds the world has ever
seen, and it is sad to record that he turned his genius to account
by uttering a series of literary forgeries. These he ascribed to a
priest whom he named Thomas Rowley, and the fact that this
was a name hitherto unknown in the history of English literature
was one of the circumstances which led to the ultimate discovery
of the fraud. The poems which Chatterton composed under these
singular and eccentric circumstances were very varied and of
remarkable merit in every case. Inscribing them on old parch-
ments which had been thrown aside as valueless, stored as rubbish

268 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

in an old chest in the muniment-room of St. Mary Redcliffe, and
taken from thence by the poet's father to cover the copy-books
of his pupils, Chatterton pretended to have found the said parch-
ments with the poems written upon them. The apparently
ancient manuscripts were so cleverly executed that critics of the
highest literary culture were entirely deceived by them, and even
when the fraud was suspected the deception was protracted by
the seeming impossibility of their being the productions of a
youth of Chatterton's age and opportunities. In these exercises
of wasted talent he employed every possible means to give an air
of antiquity. He carefully discoloured the parchments, and,
aided by the practice he had as an attorney's clerk, he copied the
handwriting of inscribed parchments. But he had set himself an
impossible task, and, as a consequence, he made slips, in spite of
his cleverness, which led to ultimate detection.

Mr. Henry Hewlett, in an able article contributed to the
Nineteenth Century, says :

' The particulars of Chatterton's fabrication, in 1768-1769, of
the poems which he attributed to Thomas Rowley, a priest of the
fifteenth century, are too familiarly known to justify repetition.
To a critical reader of our own day, modernness of thought and
style will appear so plainly stamped upon the face of them that
he may consider Professor Skeat's ample demonstration of their
sham archaisms to be almost superfluous.' Professor Skeat tells
us that ' had Chatterton's MS., now at the British Museum, been
submitted to examination during his lifetime, it is impossible
that any expert in the handwriting of the fifteenth century could
have been for an instant deceived by them.' Mr. Hewlett goes
on to say : ' It is well, however, to recall the fact that though
Chatterton's imitations, touched as they were by brilliant flashes
of genius, failed to baffle the acumen of Tyrwhitt, Warton, Gray,
and Johnson, they successfully imposed upon many erudite
antiquaries and scholars, including Dr. Milles, Dean of Exeter
and President of the Antiquarian Society (who published a
sumptuous edition of the poems, and learnedly expatiated upon
their Homeric and Chaucerian affinities), Jacob Bryant, Lord
Lyttelton, and Dr. Fry, President of St. John's, Oxford. It can
scarcely be doubted that Chatterton baited his line to catch that
" doctoral ignorance," as Montaigne calls it, which " knowledge
so often begets." Vanity may be presumed to have prompted

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 269

his mystifications in the first instance, and pride to have induced
him to persist in his original story ; but he may fairly be acquitted
of sordid motives. It is pathetic to reflect that if his boyish
peccadillo had been treated with a little less harshness, the
tragedy of his fate might have been averted, and a fresh voice
added to the choir of English poets.'

At the age of seventeen he went up to London, full of hope and
ambition, to write for bread and fame. He worked hard, but was
unsuccessful. He posed as a satirical poet, but quickly sank to
the level of a literary hack. Driven to despair, he applied for
the post of surgeon's mate in Africa. This appointment was
denied him. Infidelity had laid its hand upon him, and he became
a deist, but he is not accused of any greater vice than intemper-
ance. The redeeming feature of his life and character consists
in the fact that he sent the greater part of what little money he
made to his mother and sisters. These he buoyed up with ex-
aggerated accounts of his successes and future prospects. But
he could not deceive them for long. On August 24, 1770, he
shut himself up in his wretched garret, tore his manuscripts into
fragments, took a dose of arsenic, and died amid the remnants
of his unsuccessful bids for fame.

The chief charm of Chatterton's poems lies in a marvellous
power of picturesque description. The poems which bear his
name are, strangely enough, of inferior merit to those ascribed
to Thomas Rowley, but they rise to a high level of poetic art.

FROM 'ELINOUR AND LUG A '

(As A SPECIMEN OF CHATTERTON'S ANTIQUE LANGUAGE)

Systers in sorrowe, on thys daise-eyed bank,

Where melancholych broods, we wylle lament,

Be wette with mornynge dew and evene danke ;

Lyche levynde1 okes in eche the odher bent,

Or lyche forlettenn2 halles of merrimente,

Whose gastlie mitches3 holde the train of fryghte.

Where lethale ravens bark, and owlets wake the nyghte.

THE RESIGNATION

O God, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,

To thee, my only rock, I fly,

Thy mercy in thy justice praise.

\_Levined or lightning-scathed. 2 Forsaken. 3 Ruins.

270 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The mystic mazes of thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,

Are past the powers of human skill ;
But what th' Eternal acts is right.

O teach me in the trying hour,

When anguish swells the dewy tear,

To still my sorrows, own thy power,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.

If in this bosom aught but thee,

Encroaching sought a boundless sway,

Omniscience could the danger see,
And mercy look the cause away.

Then why, my soul, dost thou complain ?

Why drooping seek the dark recess ?
Shake off the melancholy chain,

For God created all to bless.

*****
The gloomy mantle of the night.

Which on my sinking spizit steals,
Will vanish at the morning light,

Which God, my East, my Sun, reveals.

THOMAS GRAY

1716-1771

THOMAS GRAY was the son of a money-scrivener in London,
where the poet was born in 1716. His father was a man of very
violent temperament, and gave his son but little encouragement,
but his mother's nature was of quite the opposite kind. To her
tender care the poet owed much of his success in life. He was
educated at Eton and Cambridge, entering as a pensioner at
Peterhouse College in 1734. After five years at the University,
where he had distinguished himself in literature generally, and
especially in poetry, he returned to London, and entered as a
law student at the Inner Temple. His legal studies were inter-
rupted for a time by his acceptance of an invitation from Horace
Walpole to travel with him in France and Italy. In the course
of the tour which followed the two friends quarrelled, and Gray
returned to England in 1741, a short while before his father's
death. His father left him a small patrimony, but he was in a
great measure dependent on his mother and aunt for support.
His scanty means, and possibly his tendency to indolence,- caused
him to give up the expensive and exacting profession of the law,

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 271

and he went back to Cambridge, where, with a very few intervals
of absence, he spent the rest of his life.

Gray's first appearance as a poet was made in 1747, when he
published his Ode to Eton College. In 1751 appeared the cele-
brated Elegy in a Country Churchyard, which was received with
universal and unstinted praise. In 1757 he published a less
successful collection of Pindaric Odes. On the death of Colley
Gibber, he was offered the post of Poet-Laureate, but this honour
he declined. He was appointed, eleven years afterwards, to
the Professorship of Modern History in his University, at a salary
of £400 per annum. A martyr to gout in his later years, he was
seized with a violent attack of the malady one day while at dinner
in the College Hall, and died, after six days of suffering, on the
3oth of July, 1771.

/ Gray's Elegy, as it is familiarly called, is one of the finest poems
in any language, and every English schoolboy should be made to
learn it by heart. ' The thoughts, indeed,' says Mr. Shaw, ' are
obvious enough, but the dignity with which they are expressed,
the immense range of allusion and description with which they
are illustrated, and the finished grace of the language and versifi-
cation in which they are embodied, give to this work something of
that wonderful perfection of design and execution which we see
in an antique statue or a sculptured gem.' It is universally
admitted to be Gray's masterpiece, and Hazlitt has truthfully
called it ' one of the most classical productions ever penned by
, a refined and thoughtful mind moralizing on human life.'

Of Gray's lyric compositions, the best are The Bard, the
Installation Ode on the appointment of the Duke of Grafton as
Chancellor of the University, the Hymn to Adversity, and his ode
on the Progress of Poesy. The Fatal Sisters and the Descent of
Odin are based upon Scandinavian legends.

It has been a matter of regret to his biographers and critics
that Gray did not write more poetry, but it is certainly true of him
that what he lacks in quantity he makes up for in the quality
of his works.

The earliest biography of Gray was written by Mason, and
published in 1775. In it the author quotes the following eloquent
description of the character of the poet, written by the Rev.
Mr. Temple, Rector of Mamhead :

' Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was

272 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science,
and that not superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every
branch of history, both natural and civil ; had read all the original
historians of England, France, and Italy ; and was a great anti-
quarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a prin-
cipal part of his study ; voyages and travels of all sorts were his
favourite amusements ; and he had a fine taste in painting,
prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of know-
ledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and
entertaining ; but he was also a good man — a man of virtue and
humanity. . . . Perhaps it may be said, what signifies so much
knowledge when it produced so little ? Is it worth taking so
much pains to leave no memorial but a few of his poems ? But
let it be considered that Gray was to others at least innocently
employed ; to himself certainly beneficially. His time passed
agreeably ; he was every day making some new acquisition in
science ; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened, his virtue
strengthened ; the world and mankind were shown to him without
a mask, and he was taught to consider everything as trifling, and
unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of
knowledge and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God has
placed us.'

ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,

That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores

Her Henry's L holy shade ;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights the expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey ;
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among,
Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way !

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade !

Ah, fields beloved in vain !
Where once my careless childhood strayed,

A stranger yet to pain !
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring.

1 King Henry VI., founder of the College.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 273

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen

Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margin green,

The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave ?

The captive linnet which inthral ?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,

Or urge the flying ball ?

While some on earnest business bent

Their murmuring labours ply
'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint,

To sweeten liberty ;
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry :
Still as they run they look behind ;
They hear a voice in every wind,

And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope 'is theirs, by fancy fed,

Less pleasing when possess' d ;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast.
Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new.

And lively cheer, of vigour born ;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,

That fly th' approach of morn.

Alas ! regardless of their doom,

The little victims play !
No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond to-day :
Yet see how all around 'em wait
The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train !
Ah ! show them where in ambush stand,
To seize their prey, the murd'rous band !

Ah ! tell them they are men !

These shall the fury Passions tear,

The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that skulks behind ;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth.
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,

And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,

Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy.

18

274 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' alter' d eye,

That mocks the tear it caused to flow ;
And Keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild

Amid severest woe.

Lo ! in the vale of years beneath

A grisly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their queen :
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage ;
Lo ! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,

And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings ; all are men,

Condemn' d alike to groan ;
The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah ! why should they know their fate ?
Since Sorrow never comes too late,

And Happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more : where ignorance is bliss,

'Tis folly to be wise.

ODE TO ADVERSITY

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour

The bad affright, afflict the best !
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

When first thy Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse ! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore ;
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer friend, the flattering foe ;
By vain Prosperity received,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb array'd,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 275

Still on thy solemn steps attend ;

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

O, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread Goddess ! lay thy chastening hand,
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with thy vengeful band :
(As by the impious thou art seen)
With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear,

Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound my heart.
The generous spark extinct revive.
Teach me to love and to forgive ;
Exact my own defects to scan.
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn.

Or busy housewife ply her evening care ;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ;

How jocund did they drive their team afield !

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke !

18— 2

276 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ;

Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave.

Await alike th' inevitable hour :

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ?

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death ?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ;

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll ;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear ;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tryant of his fields withstood ;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade ; nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray ;

Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 277

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply ;
And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, '

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, ling' ring look behind ? ,

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires ;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead,
Dost in these lines their artless taste relate,

If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

' Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

' There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

' Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,

Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

' One morn I missed him on the customed hill,

Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree ;
Another came ; nor yet beside the rill.

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he !

' The next, with dirges due, in sad array,

Slow thro' the church- way path we saw him borne :

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.'

T;HE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown :

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ;

Heav'n did a recompense as largely send ;
He gave to Misery all he had — a tear ;

He gained from Heav'n ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

278 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

1709-1784

' JOHNSON is JUPITER TONANS — he darts his lightning, and rolls
his thunder, in the cause of virtue and piety. The language seems
to fall short of his ideas ; he pours along, familiarizing the terms
of philosophy with bold inversions and sonorous periods.'

There is no name which occupies so high a place in the literary
annals of the eighteenth century as that of Samuel Johnson, of
whom Cowper wrote the epitaph :

' Here Johnson lies — a sage by all allow'd,
Whom to have bred may well make England proud —
Whose prose was eloquence by wisdom taught,
The graceful vehicle of virtuous thought ;
Whose verse may claim — grave, masculine, and strong,
Superior praise to the mere poet's song ;
Who many a noble gift from heaven possess'd,
And faith at last, alone worth all the rest.
Oh ! man, immortal by a double prize,
By fame on earth — by glory in the skies.'

The eldest son of Michael Johnson, a Lichfield bookseller, the
poet was born in that city on the i8th of September, 1709. He
first went to school in Lichfield, and afterwards was removed to
Stourbridge. Subsequently he proceeded, at the age of nineteen,
to Pembroke College, Oxford. At first his expenses were paid by a
gentleman, Mr. Andrew Corbett, who had such a high appreciation
of his genius that he maintained him at the University as a com-
panion to his son. But this help was, for some reason not clear
to the historian, soon discontinued, with the result that Johnson
was compelled to leave Oxford without proceeding to his degree.

When at school and college, he was not remarkable for any
marked degree of application to his studies. But his memory
was exceptional. He never forgot anything he read. His
method of reading can only be described as desultory, for he
seldom, if ever, read an author right through, but ' rambled from
one book to another, and by hasty snatches hoarded up a variety
of knowledge.' Soon after he left Oxford his father died, having
been for some time in straitened circumstances. Samuel was
glad enough to accept the post of usher in a school at Market
Bosworth, in Leicestershire, at a very modest salary. He was
obliged to travel to his destination on foot, through lack of means

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 279

to pay for a conveyance. This post he soon tired of, however,
and adopted the precarious career of a literary hack, a bookseller
in Birmingham employing him to translate Labo's Travels in
Abyssinia for the paltry sum of five guineas. In 1734, having
completed this work, he returned to his native city, and tried to
obtain subscriptions towards the publication of the Latin poems
of Politian. But the attempt proved a failure, as did also his
effort to obtain an appointment as tutor in a grammar-school at
Brerewood, in Staffordshire. While residing in Birmingham he
made the acquaintance of the celebrated Mrs. Porter, the wife
of a respectable tradesman. This lady subsequently became a
widow, and married Johnson in 1735. It is to be feared that
this was a mere pecuniary venture on the part of the poet and
philosopher, as the lady was devoid of personal or mental attrac-
tions, but was endowed with a modest fortune of ^800. Yet,
though this is the natural conclusion which has been arrived at
by more than one of his many biographers, there are proofs
extant that he became warmly attached to her. The money was
expended on the establishment of a school, in which Johnson
sought to teach Latin and Greek. This project met with but
slight success. David Garrick was one of his pupils, the number
of whom never rose to more than three, and after eighteen
months of teaching, Johnson and Garrick went to London, the
former taking with him the unfinished tragedy of Irene.

Johnson now began his literary career in London by contri-
buting a Latin ode to the Gentleman's Magazine in March, 1737.
Soon after his arrival in London he finished his tragedy, and
failed in an attempt to have it produced at Drury Lane. But
he received ^49 for twelve pages of a History of the Council
of Trent, contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine, but never
carried on to completion. It was at this juncture that he
became acquainted with the poet Savage, whose excesses led
Johnson in 1738 to publish his poem entitled London, a satire
which laid the • foundation of his fame, though it was rejected
by several publishers, and was at length sold to Dodsley for ten
guineas. The friendship of Johnson and Savage has been thus
described by Mr. Murphy :

' Both these singular characters had great parts, and they were
equally under the pressure of want. Sympathy joined them in
a league of friendship. Johnson has been often heard to relate

280 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

that he and Savage walked round Grosvenor Square, in London,
until four in the morning, in the course of their conversation,
reforming the world, dethroning princes, establishing new forms
of government, and giving laws to several States of Europe, till,
fatigued at length with their legislative office, they began to feel
the want of refreshment, but could not muster up between them
more than fourpence halfpenny, Savage, it is true, had many
vices, but vice could never strike its roots in a mind like John-
son's, seasoned early with religion and the principles of moral
rectitude.'

Johnson was again unsuccessful in an attempt to procure for
himself a mastership in a grammar-school, this time at Appleby
in Leicestershire, and at the same time a friend failed to obtain
for him a degree from Trinity College, Dublin.1 For two years
afterwards he wrote diligently for the Gentleman's Magazine,
though the remuneration which accrued to him for his labour
seems to have been but small. Under the title of Debates in
the Senate of Lilliput, he published reports of discussions in
Parliament until 1743. Osborne, a bookseller in Gray's Inn,
employed him to prepare a catalogue of the Earl of Oxford's
library, which had been purchased for ^"13,000. Savage died
in 1744? and Johnson published a biography of the un-
fortunate poet which amply maintained the reputation which
his previous works had achieved. It contained forty-eight
octavo pages, which were written in one day and night, and
brought him fifteen guineas from Cave. Sir Joshua Reynolds
read it through ' without changing his posture, as he perceived
by the torpidness of one of his arms that he had rested on a
chimney-piece by which he was standing.'

In 1747, when Garrick reopened Drury Lane Theatre, Johnson
wrote a prologue for the occasion which has been praised as ' a
masterly specimen of just dramatic criticism, as well as poetical
excellence.' It was at this time that he laid before Lord Chester-
field his plan for his Dictionary of the English Language, which
he undertook to produce in three years, but which took seven
years to accomplish. It was completed in 1754. The inter-
vening years saw the issue of The Vanity of Human Wishes,

1 The degree of M.A. was a necessary qualification for the post Johnson
sought. Pope, who admired Johnson's London, introduced him to Lord
Gower, who made the unsuccessful attempt to procure the degree for the
poet.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 281

which is an imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal. ' This is
written,' says Mr. Shaw, ' in a loftier, more solemn and declama-
tory style than the preceding poem (London), and is a fine
specimen of Johnson's dignified but somewhat gloomy rhetoric.
The illustrations, drawn from history, of the futility of those
objects which men sigh for — literary, military, or political renown,
beauty, wealth, long life, or splendid alliances — Johnson has
reproduced with splendid vigour ; but he has added several of his
own, where he shows a power and grandeur in no sense inferior
to that of Juvenal. . Thus, to the striking picture of the fall of
Sejanus, related with such grim humour by the Roman satirist.
Johnson has added the not less impressive picture of the disgrace
of Wolsey, and his episode of Charles XII. is no unworthy counter-
part to the portrait of Hannibal.' Irene was staged at length,
in 1749, but it was not a great success, though produced by
Garrick. The great actor, when asked why he did not accept
another play from the same author, replied, ' When Johnson
writes tragedy, declamation roars and passion sleeps ; when
Shakespeare wrote, he dipped his pen in his own heart.' The
play is one of the few comparatively insignificant things this
great writer has produced.

It was on the 20 th of March, 1750, that Johnson issued the
first number of the Rambler, which ran a brilliant course for
two years. Of the 208 essays, Johnson wrote all but five.
' Before a line of it was written, he composed a beautiful and
solemn prayer, imploring that the Divine Being would crown his
efforts with success, to promote the intellectual and moral im-
provement of his fellow-creatures.' And this high aim was nobly
accomplished. The loss of his wife caused him to write a sermon
on her death, which was published, though never preached.

Johnson now turned his attention to the Idler, the Adventurer,
and the Connoisseur, contributing also to the Literary Magazine.
The death of his mother, in 1759, led him to write Rasselas.
Prince of Abyssinia, which he composed with great rapidity,
in order to defray the funeral expenses. For this he received
^"125. He was now offered a good living in the Church, if he
would take Holy Orders, but he declined, though he was
a firm believer, an advocate of Tory principles, and a good
Churchman.

In 1762 the Earl of Bute brought Johnson's name and claims

282 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

before the King, who rewarded his literary labours with a pension
of £300 a year, which enabled him to pass the remaining portion
of his life in comparative comfort, besides enabling him to mix in
a class of society from which his previous poverty had excluded
him. In 1764 he was honoured by the University of Dublin
with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and in 1774 the
University of Oxford made him a D.C.L. His last and greatest
work was his Lives of the Poets, in which he included his life of
Savage before-mentioned. It is a work of inestimable value,
amusing and instructive. It has been regretted that it deals
with a period which was not specially remarkable for poetical
genius, but Johnson has made the most of the materials at his
disposal, and has placed the world under a debt of gratitude
for his able biographies of such greater poets as Milton, Dryden,
Pope, Butler, Swift, Gray, and Cowley. It is less pompous and
pretentious in style than many of his previous works, and ' has
contributed to immortalize his name, and has secured that
national esteem which party or partiality could not procure, and
which even the injudicious zeal of his friends has not been able
to lessen.'

Johnson had enjoyed the friendship of Mr. Thrale, a rich
brewer and Member of Parliament, since the year 1765. This
gentleman and his family had a residence in London and a villa
at Streatham, at both of which Johnson was a frequent and
honoured guest. In this capacity, too, he made many excursions
to different parts of the United Kingdom, and once as far as
Paris. In 1781 his Lives was published, and from that time
his health began to give way. He became depressed, and
was haunted with the fear of death. In June, 1783, he was
struck with paralysis, which was followed by dropsy, and after
a futile attempt to recuperate in his native air, he returned to
London to live. The end came on the I3th of December, 1784, in
his house in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. A few days afterwards he
was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, at the foot of Shakespeare's
monument, and not far from David Garrick, his pupil and friend.
He left his fortune, amounting to £1,500, to Francis Barber, his
faithful servant. A monument stands to his memory in St.
Paul's.

Lord Macaulay, in his review of Boswell's life of the great
philosopher, says : ' The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 283

was the union of great powers with low prejudices. If we judged
him by the best part of his mind, we should place him almost as
high as he was placed by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by the worst
parts of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell him-
self.' But, rather than pursue this criticism in the somewhat
severe manner in which Macaulay enlarges upon it, we prefer to
quote, in concluding this brief memoir, from the writer in the
Encyclopedia Britannica, who thus eloquently describes the
personality, character, and genius of this great poet and critic :
' Dr. Johnson was 'a man of herculean form of body, as well as
of great powers of mind. His stature was tall, his limbs were
large, his strength was more than common, and his activity in
early life had been greater than such a form gave reason to
expect ; but he was subject to an infirmity of a convulsive kind
resembling the distemper called St. Vitus's dance, and he had the
seeds of so many diseases sown in his constitution that a short
time before his death he declared that he hardly remembered
to have passed one day wholly free from pain. He possessed
extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much culti-
vated by reading, and still more by meditation and reflection.
His memory was retentive, his imagination vigorous, and his
judgment penetrating. He read with great rapidity, retained
with wonderful vividness what he so easily collected, and pos-
sessed the power of reducing to order and system the scattered
hints on any subject which he had gathered from different books.
It would not be safe to claim for him the highest place amongst
his contemporaries in any single department of literature, but
he brought more mind to every subject, and had a greater variety
of knowledge ready for all reasoning, than any other man that
could easily be named. Though, prone to superstition, he was
in other respects so incredulous that Hogarth observed, whilst
Johnson firmly believed the Bible, he seemed determined to
believe nothing but the Bible. Of the importance of religion he
had a strong sense ; his zeal for its interest was always awake,
whilst profaneness of every kind was abashed in his presence.
The same energy which he displayed in his literary productions,
or even greater, was exhibited in his conversation, which was
various, striking, and instructive. Like the sage in Rasselas,
he spoke, and attention watched his lips ; he reasoned, and con-
viction closed his period. ... As his purse and his house were

284 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

ever open to the indigent, so was his heart tender to those that
wanted relief, and his soul susceptible of gratitude and every
kind impression. He had a roughness in his manner which sub-
dued the saucy and terrified the meek ; but it was only in his
manner, for no man was more loved than Johnson by those that
knew him, and his works will be read with admiration 'as long as
the language in which they are written shall be understood.'

FROM THE ' VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES'
WOLSEY

In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand,

Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand :

To him the church, the realm, their powers consign ;

Through him the rays of regal bounty shine ;

Turn'd by his nod the stream of honour flows,

His smile alone security bestows :

Still to new heights his restless wishes tower,

Claim leads to claim, and power advances power ;

Till conquest unresisted ceased to please,

And rights submitted left him none to seize.

At length his sovereign frowns — the trains of state

Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate :

Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye,

His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly ;

Now drops at once the pride of awful state,

The golden canopy, the glittering plate,

The regal palace, the luxurious board,

The liveried army, and the menial lord.

With age, with cares, with maladies oppressed,

He seeks the refuge of monastic rest.

Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings,

And his last sighs reproach the faith of Kings.

ON THE DEATH OF DR. LEVETT, 1782

Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,

As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts, or slow decline,

Our social comforts drop away.

Well tried through many a varying year,

See Levett to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,

Of every friendless name the friend.

Yet still he fills affection's eye,

Obscurely wise and coarsely kind ;
Nor, lettered arrogance, deny

Thy praise to merit unrefin'd.

When fainting nature called for aid,
And hovering death prepared the blow,

His vigorous remedy displayed

The power of art without the show.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 285

In misery's darkest cavern known,

His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless anguish poured his groan,

And lonely want retired to die.

No summons mocked by chill delay,

No petty gain disdained by pride ;
The modest wants of every day,

The toil of every day supplied.

His virtues walked their narrow round,

Nor made a pause, nor left a void ;
And sure the Eternal Master found

The single talent well employed.

The busy day, the peaceful night,

Unfelt, uncounted, glided by ;
His frame was firm — his powers were bright,

Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then with no fiery throbbing pain,

No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,

And freed his soul the nearest way.

FROM 1THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES'
RESIGNATION TO THE WILL OF HEAVEN

Where then shall hope and fear their objects find ?

Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind ?

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate ?

Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise1,

No cries invoke the mercies of the skies ?

Inquirer, cease ; petitions yet remain,

Which Heaven may hear, nor deem religion vain.

Still raise for good the supplicating voice,

But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.

Safe in His power, whose eyes discern afar

The secret ambush of a spacious prayer.

Implore His aid, in His decisions rest.

Secure, whate'er He gives, He gives the best.

Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires,

And strong devotion to the skies aspires,

Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind.

Obedient passions, and a will resign'd ;

For love, which scarce collective man can fill ;

For patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill ;

For faith, that, panting for a happier seat,

Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat :

These goods for man the laws of Heaven ordain ;

These goods He grants, who grants the power to gain ;

With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,

And makes the happiness she does not find.

286 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

JOHN GAY

1685-1732

JOHN GAY was born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire, in 1685. He
was descended from a family of great respectability. Both his
parents dying when the poet was about nine years of age, he
was, after receiving a good education at the free school of
Barnstaple, apprenticed to a silk - mercer in the Strand,
London. The lad soon conceived a dislike for trade, and was
negligent about the duties it imposed upon him. He was pos-
sessed of some private means, and was ambitious to distinguish
himself by the exercise of those latent powers which he had early
begun to feel were within him. His indentures of apprentice-
ship were cancelled, and he embarked upon a literary career.

Gay's first venture, entitled Rural Sports, was published in
1711. It was dedicated to Pope, who was himself young enough
to greatly appreciate so signal an honour. A close friendship
sprung up between the two, which lasted until the death of Gay
cast a temporary gloom over the life of his companion and
admirer. In 1712 Gay was appointed Secretary to Anne, Duchess
of Monmouth. This office he held until 1714, when he went with
the Earl of Clarendon to Hanover, the latter having been sent as
Ambassador to the Court there. About this time he produced -
a parody on the style of Ambrose Philips, entitled the Shepherd's
Week, and a mock-heroic poem called Trivia ; or, the Art of
Walking the Streets of London. The latter ' procured for the
writer a high reputation, and is a fine specimen of that species
of burlesque in which elevated language is employed in the detail
of trifling, mean, or ludicrous circumstances.'

His Fables, by which he is best remembered, were published in
1726. They were primarily intended to be helpful to the Duke
of Cumberland, to whom they were dedicated. They are written
in octosyllabic metre, and are the best known of all the werks
of this poet, though they are by no means the best. Gay was
ambitious, and was disappointed when in 1727 he was offered the
insignificant post of Gentleman Usher to one of the young prin-
cesses. He indignantly refused to accept such a position.

The Beggar's Opera appeared in 1727. An attempt to have it
produced at Drury Lane proved unsuccessful, but it was after-

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 287

wards staged with tremendous effect at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Its popularity was quick and enormous. It was written at the
suggestion of Dean .Swift ; and Sir Walter Scott, writing on the
subject in the Encyclopedia Britannica, thus complimentarily
refers to it : ' The eighteenth century gave rise to a new species
of dramatic entertainment, which was the English opera. The
Italian opera had been introduced into this country at a great
expense, and to the prejudice, as it was supposed, of the legitimate
drama. Gay, in aiming at another beyond a parody of this
fashionable entertainment, and making it the vehicle of some
political satire against Sir Robert Walpole's administration, un-
wittingly laid the foundation of the English opera. . . . The
moral tendency of the Beggar's Opera has been much questioned.
This play is chiefly remarkable as having given birth to the
English opera.' But, though its morality may certainly be
questioned, there can be no doubt as to its literary excellence.
Indeed, it may fairly be looked upon as the most notable of his
productions. The profits which accrued to its author were very
large.

After this Gay published some more operas, amongst which was
Polly, a kind of continuation of the Beggar's Opera. During the
closing years of his life he was received into the household of the
Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, ' where he seems to have been
petted like some favourite lapdog.' Under this sheltering roof
he died in 1732. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his
friend Pope composed a very eulogistic epitaph for his tomb.

RURAL OCCUPATION

"Tis not that rural sports alone invite,
But all' the grateful country breathes delight ;
Here blooming Health exerts her gentle reign,
And strings the sinews of the industrious swain.
Soon as the morning lark salutes the day,
Through dewy fields I take my frequent way,
Where I behold the farmer's early care
In the revolving labours of the year.

When the fresh Spring in all her state is crown'd,
And high luxuriant grass o'erspreads the ground,
The labourer with the bending scythe is seen,
Shaving the surface of the waving green ;
Of all her native pride disrobes the land,
And meads lays waste before his sweeping hand ;
While with the mounting sun the meadow glows,
The fading herbage round he loosely throwsj

A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

But, if some sign portend a lasting shower,
The experienced swain foresees the coming hour,
His sunburnt hands the scatt'ring fork forsake,
And ruddy damsels ply the saving rake ;
In rising hills the fragrant harvest grows,
And spreads along the field in equal rows.

Now, when the height of heaven bright Phoebus gains,
And level rays cleave wide the thirsty plains ;
When heifers seek the shade and cooling lake,
And in the middle pathway basks the snake ;
Oh ! lead me, guard me from the sultry hours.
Hide me, ye forests, in your closest bowers ;
Where the tall oak his spreading arms entwines,
And with the beech a mutual shade combines ;
Where flows the murmuring brook, inviting dreams,
Where bordering hazel overhangs the streams,
Whose rolling current winding round and round,
With frequent falls makes all the wood resound ;
Upon the mossy couch my limbs I cast,
And e'en at noon the sweets of evening taste.

A FAIR ON THE THAMES, 1716

O roving Muse ! recall that wondrous year

When winter reigned in black Britannia's air ;

When hoary Thames, with frosted osiers crowned

Was three long moons in icy fetters bound.

The waterman, forlorn, along the shore,

Pensive reclines upon his useless oar :

See harnessed steeds desert the stony town,

And wander roads unstable, not their own,

Wheels o'er the hardened waters smoothly glide.

And raze with whitened tracks the slippery tide ;

Here the fat cook piles high the blazing fire,

And scarce the spit can turn the steer entire ;

Booths sudden hide the Thames, long streets appear,

And numerous games proclaim the crowded fair.

So, when a general bids the martial train

Spread their encampment o'er the spacious plain,

Thick-rising tents a canvas city build,

And the loud dice resound through all the field.

BLACK-EYED SUSAN

All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd,

The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard :

' Oh ! where shall I my true-love find ?
Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true,
If my sweet William sails among the crew.'

William, who high upon the yard

Rock'd with the billow to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice he heard

He sigh'd, and cast his eyes below :
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And, quick as lightning, on the deck he stands.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 289

So the sweet lark, high poised in air.

Shuts close his pinions to his breast,
If chance his mate's shrill call he hear,

And drops at once into her nest.
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lips those kisses sweet.

' O Susan, Susan, lovely dear,

My vows shall ever true remain ;
Let me kiss off that falling tear ;

We only part to meet again.
Change as ye list, ye winds ! my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still points to thee.

' Believe not what the landsmen say,

Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind ;

They'll tell thee, sailors, when away,
In every port a mistress find :

Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so,

For thou art present wheresoe'er I go.

' If to fair India's coast we sail,

Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright,
Thy breath is Afric's spicy gale,

Thy skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view
Wa'kes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.

' Though battle call me from thy arms,

Let not my pretty Susan mourn ;
Though cannons roar, yet, safe from harms,

William shall to his dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly,
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye.'

The boatswain gave the dreadful word ;

The sails their swelling bosom spread ;
No longer must she stay aboard ;

They kiss'd — she sigh'd — he hung his head.
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land ;
' Adieu !' she cries, and waved her lily hand.

290 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

WILLIAM COWPER

1731-1800

' I know how ill my harp, of artless string,
Can celebrate a name so dear as thine,
Or offer tribute at thy memory's shrine,
Which aught of added fame might hope to bring
Unto thy muse : but thoughts that fondly cling
To hours thy page has brighten'd, would entwine
For thee one simple, votive wreath of mine,
Which round thy urn wi th fearful hand I fling.
The just memorial of thy genuine worth,

Genius and feelings like thy own must claim,
And where can these be found ? yet, while the flame
Which sanctifies the altar, and home's hearth,
Shall warm and cheer thy " native nook of earth,"
England with gratitude shall bless thy name.'

BERNARD BARTON.

THE name of William Cowper is one of the greatest in the annals
of English poesy. His many biographers are unanimous in his
praise. ' To Cowper belongs pre-eminently/ says Willmott,
' above any writer in our language, the title of the Poet of the
Affections. Campbell compares The Task £b^~ar"pTayfiir little
fountain which gathers magnitude and beauty as it proceeds.
Cowper found the fountain in his heart. He has brought the
Muse, in her most attractive form, to sit down by our hearths,
and has breathed a sanctity over the daily economy of our exist- -
ence. He builds up no magic castles ; he conducts us into no
enchanted gardens ; no silver lutes sigh through his verse ; no
wings of faery glisten over his page. Instead of wandering over
the shores of old romance, he teaches us out of the Book of Life,
and invests with a delightful charm the commonest offices of
humanity. He pauses with no delight upon the variegated
fancy of Davenant, the serious sweetness of Spenser, or the re-
splendent visions of Milton ; and he joyfully exchanges the beau-
tiful pomp of the Attic mythology for the dearer recollections of
his native village ; for the garden gate over which he has often
hung ; the humming of the bees ; and the piping of the robin
in his own apple-tree.'

William Cowper was born at Great Befkhampstead, in Hert-
fordshire, on the I5th of November, 1731. His father was the
Rev. John Cowper, D.D., Rector of the parish. Dr. Cowper was
a son of Spenser Cowper, who was one of the judges of the

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 291

Court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother to the first Earl
Cowper, Lord High Chancellor of England. The poet's mother
was of noble lineage, being connected with some of the most
exalted families in the kingdom.

The story of the poet's life is a particularly sad one. He was
bullied unmercifully at his first school, from which he was
removed to Westminster. From this school, at which he re-
mained until he was eighteen years of age, he entered a solicitor's
office as apprentice, and remained there for three years. He did
not study much law during this period, however, but devoted
his time to the pursuit of classical and general literature, and
enjoying the social intercourse afforded by a number of congenial
spirits whom he refers to as the ' Nonsense Club.' He read Pope's
translation of the Iliad with great perseverance, comparing it
closely with the original, and studied French and Italian authors
of eminence. He also contributed occasionally to various
journals, notably to the Connoisseur, which was edited by his
friend Colman. After his apprenticeship, he went into chambers
at the Temple, but began very soon to suffer from fits of depres-
sion, which for awhile made his life a burden to him, and ulti-
mately resulted in insanity. He was destined never to practise
his profession. His influence at headquarters obtained for him
the well-paid office of Clerk of the Journals in the House of Lords,
but his terror at the thought of appearing in public led him to
make an attempt at self-destruction. He was removed to an
asylum, from which he was discharged after a short time, bu.
now quite unfitted for any professional or official employment.
Being possessed of some private means, he became an inmate in
the home of a clergyman named Unwin, in Huntingdon. On the
death of that gentleman, he went with the widow to Olney in
1767, where he made the acquaintance of John Newton, a strong
Calvinist, who exerted a considerable influence over the life and
thought of the poet. It is thought that his friendship was in-
jurious to Cowper, in his already too morbid state of mind. ' By
perpetually dwelling,' says Mr. Shaw, ' upon mysterious and
gloomy religious questions, and by encouraging the fatal habit
of analyzing his own internal sensations, the poet's tendency to
enthusiasm was aggravated ; and though it could not diminish
the charm of his genius or the benevolence of his heart, this re-
ligious fanaticism entirely destroyed the happiness of his life.

19 — 2

292 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

In 1773 and the two following years he suffered a relapse of his
malady, on recovering from which he endeavoured to calm his
shattered spirits with a variety of innocent amusements, garden-
ing, carpentering, and taming hares.' He left Olney in 1786,
and became unsettled in his movements, changing his residence
constantly within the next ten years. Mrs. Unwin died in 1796,
a bereavement which intensified the sadness of the poet's re-
maining years. He died on the 25th of April, 1800, and was
buried in the parish church of East Dereham. His monument,
by Flaxman, was erected to his memory by Lady Hesketh, and
bears the following affectionate and appropriate tribute from
the pen of his biographer. Hayley :

' Ye, who with warmth the public triumph feel,
Of talents, dignified, with sacred zeal,
Here to devotion's bard devoutly just,
Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust !
England, exulting in his spotless fame,
Ranks with her dearest sons his fav'rite name :
Sense, fancy, wit. suffice not all to raise
So clear a title to affection's praise ;
His highest honours to the heart belong ;
His virtues formed the magic of his song.'

Cowper wrote at first as a pastime, but the flowers of his genius
were so well received by the reading public that he was led to
pursue the practice as a profession. He was already fifty-one
years of age when, in 1782, he published his first poems, The
Progress of Error, Table Talk, and Conversation. These met with
but slight success. His great poem, The Task, was written at the
suggestion of his accomplished friend Lady Austen, and appeared
in 1785. It is written in blank verse. As soon as he had com-
pleted the second volume of this masterpiece, he began a transla-
tion of Homer, being dissatisfied with the translation of Pope.
The 40,000 lines were completed, and the work published
by subscription, in 1791.

Cowper's shorter poems are so well known as to need but a
passing word. Nothing could excel the pathos and sweetness of
his perennial lines on receiving his mother's picture. To many
readers he is best known as the author of John Gilpin, a poem
which teems throughout with inimitable drollery. His Olney
Hymns are exquisite. His poems relating to our furred and
feathered friends have entitled him to be called the Laureate of
the Animal World.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 293

The poem of John Gilpin is a proof that this man of gloom
had his merry moods. The story was related to him by
Lady Austen, who had heard it as a child. It is said to have
caused the poet a sleepless night, as he was kept awake by
laughter at it. During his hours of restlessness he composed the
well-known ballad, and sent it anonymously to the Public
Advertiser on the I4th of November, 1782. A popular actor named
Henderson recited it at the Freemasons' Hall, and it leaped into
popular favour, achieving a place in the affection of the English
people which it has retained to the present day. The original of
John Gilpin is supposed to have been a Mr. Beyer, a linen-draper
who lived at the Cheapside corner of Paternoster Row, and died,
at the age of ninety-nine, in 1791.

Of a character far different is this great poet's masterpiece,
The Task. It has already been stated that we have to thank
Lady Austen for the suggestion. She pressed Cowper to write
a poem in blank verse. He said he would if she would suggest
a subject. ' Oh,' said the lady, ' you can write on anything.
Write on this sofa.' And accordingly ' The Sofa ' forms the
subject of the first book of the great poem. It established the
reputation of its author at once. His biographer in the
Encyclopedia Britannica says of this work :

' He who desires to put into the hands of a youth a poem which,
though not destitute of poetical embellishment, is yet free from
all matter of a licentious tendency, will find in The Task a book
adapted to his p'urpose. It would be absurd and extravagant
austerity to condemn those poetical productions in which love
constitutes the leading feature. That passion has in every age
been the concernment of life, the theme of the poet, and the plot
of the stage. Yet there is a kind of amorous sensibility, border-
ing on morbid enthusiasm, which the youthful mind too often
imbibes from the glowing sentiments of the poets. Their genius
describes in the most splendid colours the operations of a passion
which requires rebuke rather than incentive, and lends to the
most grovelling sensuality the enchantments of a rich and
creative imagination. But in The Task of Cowper there is no
licentiousness of description. All is grave, moral, and majestic.
A vein of sober thinking pervades every page, and the insuf-
ficiency and variety of human pursuits are described in finished
poetry.'

294 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'THE TASK,' BOOK III.
I WAS A STRICKEN DEER

I was a stricken deer that left the herd

Long since ; with many an arrow deep infix'd

My panting side was charg'd, when I withdrew

To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.

There was I found by One who had Himself

Been hurt by the archers. In His side He bore

And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and heaPd and bade me live.

Since then, with few associates, in remote

And silent woods I wander, far from those

My former partners of the peopled scene ;

With few associates, and not wishing more.

Here much I ruminate, as much I may,

With other views of men and manners now

Than once, and others of a life to come.

I see that all are wanderers, gone astray

Each in his own delusions ; they are lost

In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd

And never won. Dream after dream ensues,

And still they dream that they shall still succeed,

And still are disappointed. Rings the world

With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,

And add two-thirds of the remaining half,

And find the total of their hopes and fears

Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay

As if created only like the fly,

That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon,

To sport their season, and be seen no more.

The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise,

And pregnant with discoveries new and rare.

FROM 'THE TASK,1 BOOK IV.

THE COUNTRY POSTMAN

Hark ! 'tis the twanging horn ! O'er yonder bridge.

That with its wearisome but needful length

Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon

Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,

He comes, the herald of a noisy world,

With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist and frozen locks,

News from all nations lumbering at his back.

True to his charge the close-pack'd load behind,

Yet careless what he brings, his one concern

Is to conduct it to the destined inn,

And having dropped the expected bag — pass on.

He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,

Cold and yet cheerful : messenger of grief

Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some ;

To him indifferent whether grief or joy.

Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,

Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet

With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks

Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 295

Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But oh the important budget ! usher'd in
With such heart-shaking music, who can say
What are its tidings ! have our troops awaked ?
Or do they still, as if with opium drugg'd.
Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave P1
Is India free ? and does she wear her plumed
And jewell'd turban with a smile of peace,
Or do we grind her still ? The grand debate,
The popular harangue, the tart reply,
The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit,
And the loud laugh — I long to know them all ;
I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,

And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

THE CHAFFINCH'S NEST

A TALE,S FOUNDED ON FACT

(June. 1793)

In Scotland's realm, where trees are few,

Nor even shrubs abound ;
But where, however bleak the view,

Some better things are found ;

For husband there and wife may boast

Their union undefiled,
And false ones are as rare almost

As hedgerows in the wild ;

In Scotland's realm forlorn and bare
The history chanced of late —

The history of a wedded pair,
A chaffinch and his mate.

The spring drew near, each felt a breast

With genial instinct fill'd ;
They pair'd, and would have built a nest.

But found not where to build.

1 The American War was then taking place.

2 This tale is founded on an article which appeared in the Buckinghamshire
Herald, Saturday, the ist of June, 1792 : 'Glasgow, May 23. — In a block,
or pulley, near the head of the mast of a gabber t, now lying at the Broomie-
law, there is a chaffinch's nest and four eggs. The nest was built while
the vessel lay at Greenock, and was followed hither by both birds. Though
the block is occasionally lowered for the inspection of the curious, the
birds have not forsaken the nest. The cock, however, visits the nest but
seldom, while the hen never leaves it but when she descends to the hull
for food.'

296 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The heaths uncover 'd and the moors
Except with snow and sleet,

Sea-beaten rocks and naked shores
Could yield them no retreat.

Long time a breeding place they sought,
Till both grew vexed and tired ;

At length a ship arriving brought
The good so long desired.

A ship ? — could such a restless thing
Afford them place of rest ?

Or was the merchant charged to bring
The homeless birds a nest ?

Hush ! — silent hearers profit most —

This racer of the sea
Proved kinder to them than the coast,

It served them with a tree.

But such a tree ! 'twas shaven deal,
The tree they call a mast,

And had a hollow with a wheel

Through which the tackle pass'd.

Within that cavity aloft

Their roofless home they fixed,

Formed with materials neat and soft,
Bents, wool, and feathers mixed.

Four ivory eggs soon pave its floor,
With russet specks bedight ;

The vessel weighs, forsakes the shore,
And lessens to the sight.

The mother-bird is gone to sea,
As she had changed her kind :

But goes the male ? Far wiser, he
Is doubtless left behind.

No — soon as from ashore he saw
The winged mansion move,

He flew to reach it, by a law
Of never-failing love ;

Then perching at his consort's side,
Was briskly borne along,

The billows and the blast defied,
And cheer'd her with a song.

The seaman with sincere delight
His feather'd shipmates eyes,

Scarce less exulting in the sight
Than when he tows a prize.

For seamen much believe in signs,
And from a chance so new

Each some approaching good divines.
And may his hopes be true !

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 297

Hail, honour' d land ! a desert where

Not even birds can hide,
Yet parent of this loving pair

Whom nothing could divide.

And ye who, rather than resign

Your matrimonial plan,
Were not afraid to plough the brine

In company with man ;

For whose lean country much disdain

We English often show ;
Yet from a richer nothing gain

But wantonness and woe ;

Be it your fortune, year by year,

The same resource to prove,
And may ye sometimes landing here,

Instruct us how to love !

ON THE LOSS OF 'THE ROYAL GEORGE'
WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED1
(To the march in Scipio)

Toll for the brave !

The brave that are no more !
All sunk beneath the wave,

Fast by their native shore !

Eight hundred of the brave,

Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,

And laid her on her side.

A land-breeze shook the shrouds,

And she was overset ;
Down went the Royal George,

With all her crew complete.

Toll for the brave !

Brave Kempenfelt is gone.
His last sea-fight is fought ;

His work of glory done.

It was not in the battle ;

No tempest gave the shock ;
She sprang no fatal leak ;

She ran upon.no rock.

1 The Roval George, 108 guns, was lost off Spitheacl on August 29, 1782.
She was undergoing some repairs, and was careened over, when a sudden
gust of wind overset her, and she sank. A great number of persons were
on board at the time, from Portsmouth. Two or three hundred bodies
floated on shore, and were buried in Kingston Churchyard.

298 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

His sword was in its sheath ;

His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down

With twice four hundred men.

Weigh the vessel up,

Once dreaded by our foes !

And mingle with our cup
The tear that England owes.

Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,

Full charged with England's thunder,
And plough the distant main.

But Kempenfelt is gone,
His victories are o'er ;

And he and his eight hundred
Shall plough the waves no more.

THE NEGRO'S COMPLAINT

Forced from home and all i ts pleasures,

Afric's coast I left forlorn ;
To increase a stranger's treasures,

O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,

Paid my price in paltry gold ;
But, though slave they have enroll' d me,

Minds are never to be sold.

Still in thought as free as ever,

What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,

Me to torture, me to task ?
Fleecy locks and black complexion

Cannot forfeit Nature's claim ;
Skins may differ, but affection

Dwells in white and black the same.

Why did all-creating Nature

Make the plant for which we toil ?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,

Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters, iron-hearted,

Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted

For the sweets your cane affords.

Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,

Is there One who reigns on high ?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,

Speaking from His throne, the sky ?
Ask Him, if your knotted scourges,

Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty, urges

Agents of His will to "use ?

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 299

Hark ! He answers ! — wild tornadoes

Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,

Are the voice with which He speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations

Afric's sons should undergo,
Fix'd their tyrant's habitations

Where His whirlwinds answer — No !

By our blood in Afric wasted,

Ere our necks received the chain ;
By the miseries that we tasted,

Crossing in your barks the main ;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us

To the man-degrading mart,
All sustain'd by patience, taught us

Only by a broken heart !

Deem our nation brutes no longer,

Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger

Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealing:

Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings

Ere you proudly question ours !

TO THE NIGHTINGALE
WHICH THE AUTHOR HEARD SING ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

Whence is it, that amazed I hear,

From yonder wither'd spray,
This foremost morn of all the year,

The melody of May ?

And why, since thousands would be proud

Of such a favour shown,
Am I selected from the crowd,

To witness it alone ?

Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me,

For that I also long
Have practised in the groves like thee,

Though not like thee in song ?

Or sing'st thou rather under force

Of some divine command,
Commission'd to presage a course

Of happier days at hand ?

Thrice welcome then ! for many a long

And joyless year have I,
As thou to-day, put forth my song,

Beneath a wintry sky.

But thee no wintry skies can harm,

Who only need'st to sing
To make even January charm,

And every season Spring.

3oo

THE RAVEN .

(1780)

A raven, while with glossy breast

Her new-laid eggs she fondly press'd,

And, on her wicker-work high mounted,

Her chickens prematurely counted,

(A fault philosophers might blame,

If quite exempted from the same,)

Enjoy'd at ease the genial day ;

'Twas April, as the bumpkins say,

The legislature call'd it May.1

But suddenly a wind, as high

As ever swept a wintry sky,

Shook the young leaves about her ears,

And fill'd her with a thousand fears,

Lest the rude blast should snap the bough,

And spread her golden hopes below.

But just at eve the blowing weather

And all her fears were hush'd together ;

' And now,' quoth poor unthinking Ralph,

' 'Tis over, and the brood is safe ' ;

(For ravens, though, as birds of omen,

They teach both conjurers and old women

To tell us what is to befall,

Can't prophesy themselves at all.)

The morning came, when neighbour Hodge,

Who long had mark'd her airy lodge,

And destined all the treasure there

A gift to his expecting fair,

Climb' d like a squirrel to his dray,

And bore the worthless prize away.

'Tis Providence alone secures
In every change both mine and yours :
Safety consists not in escape
From dangers of a frightful shape ;
An earthquake may be bid to spare
The man that's strangled by a hair.
Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread,
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.

FROM 'THE OLNEY HYMNS'

OH ! FOR A CLOSER WALK WITH GOD

Oh ! for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame ;

A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb !

1 Alluding to the change of style, by which, in 1752, eleven days were
deducted from the year. It was" long before the peasantry would accept
the advanced dates.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 301

Where is the blessedness I knew

When first I saw the Lord ?
Where is the soul-refreshing view

Of Jesus and His word ?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed !

How sweet their memory still !
But they have left an aching void,

The world can never fill.

Return, O holy Dove, return !

Sweet messenger of rest !
I hate the sins that made Thee mourn,

And drove Thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,

And worship only Thee.

So shall my walk be close with God,

Calm and serene my frame ;
So purer light shall mark the road

That leads me to the Lamb.

HARK, MY SOUL ! IT IS THE LORD

Hark, rny soul I it is the Lord ;
'Tis thy Saviour, hear His word ;
Jesus speaks, and speaks to thee,
' Say, poor sinner, lovest thou Me ?

' I deliver'd thee when bound,
And when bleeding, heal'd thy wound ;
Sought thee wandering, set thee right,
Turn'd thy darkness into light.

' Can a woman's tender care
Cease towards the child she bare ?
Yes, she may forgetful be,
Yet will I remember thee.

' Mine is an unchanging love,
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath,
Free and faithful, strong as death.

' Thou shalt see My glory soon,
When the work of grace is done ;
Partner of My throne shalt be ; —
Say, poor sinner, lovest thou Me ?'

Lord, it is my chief complaint,
That my love is weak and faint ;
Yet I love Thee and adore, —
Oh ! for grace to love Thee more !

302 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

GOD MOVES IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform ;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs,

And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take.
The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace :

Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour ;
The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err.
And scan His work in vain :

God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

REV. GEORGE CRABBE
1754-1832

' THE title self-taught, often unmeaningly applied to poets, or
aspirants after poetry, slightly tinctured with learning, but servile
followers of the few models to which they have access, is perfectly
appropriate to the subject of the present article, as being one of
the most truly original writers in the range of our popular li tera-
ture.' Thus the writer of his memoir in Dr. Aikin's Select Works
of the British Poets. George Crabbe was born af the obscure
fishing village of Aldborough, in Suffolk. His father, a man of
rough manners and robust intellect, was at one time a parish
clerk and schoolmaster, and afterwards a collector of duties on
salt, or saltmaster, in the said village. ' In a mean cottage, on a
squalid shore,' the future poet passed his years of childhood,

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 303

' cradled amongst the rough sons of the ocean — a daily witness of
unbridled passions, and of manners remote from the sameness
and artificial smoothness of polished society.' His parents soon
noticed the extraordinary abilities which he possessed, and his
ardent passion for the acquisition of knowledge. Books were his
constant companions, and he devoured the contents of all that
came within his reach. Fiction, fairy-tales, and poetry had a
special charm for him, but besides this he began early to be a close
student of human nature, and of such beauties of natural scenery
and history as the neighbourhood of his home afforded. He was
placed, at the age of fourteen, under the care of a surgeon near
Bury St. Edmunds, and remained in his service for three years.
Removing to Woodbridge, he completed his apprenticeship under
another member of the profession. During this early period of
his career he wrote poetry with great persistence. He contri-
buted a poem on Hope to the Lady's Magazine, and published
another anonymously on the subject of Inebriety. In 1775 he
returned to his native place, and for awhile assisted his father
in his calling. After this he went to London with a view to
finishing his medical course, but for want of means he was obliged
to come home again. He attempted to build up a practice for
himself as a surgeon and apothecary, but with small measure of
success. To make matters more gloomy, he formed an attach-
ment to a young woman named Sarah Elmy, who, to quote the
words of the poet's son, ' was too prudent to marry when there
seemed to be no chance of a competent livelihood ; and he,
instead of being in a position to maintain a family, could hardly,
by labour which he abhorred, earn daily bread for himself.'
Yet she was true to him through many vicissitudes, and in twelve
years became his wife.

Crabbe now started upon the precarious course of a literary
adventurer. He borrowed £5 from his friend, Mr. Dudley North,
paid his debts, and took his ticket for London on a small
sloop sailing from Aldborough. He arrived in the Metropolis
in April, 1780, with a box of clothes, a case of surgical instru-
ments, and £3 in his pocket. Then began a period of deep
want and humiliation. Publishers refused him coldly, and
the great refused to patronize him. At length a generous bene-
factor held out a helping hand. Very touching is the diary which
he kept throughout this dark period, addressed to Mira, his

304 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

betrothed. In the depth of his misery, he wrote to Edmund
Burke, and walked Westminster Bridge backwards and forwards
until daylight the night after he despatched the letter. Burke
responded with sympathy, examined his writings, and housed
him at Beaconsfield. He introduced him to Fox and
Reynolds.

Burke took charge of two poems, The Library and The Village,
improved them a little, and took them to Dodsley, the publisher.
The former was published in 1781 and the latter in 1783. They
created a favourable impression on the public mind. Lord
Thurlow, who had left a letter from Crabbe unanswered, invited
him to breakfast, and sent him away the richer by a hundred
pounds.

Crabbe now followed the bent of his inclination by taking Holy
Orders, and returned as curate to his native village, but soon
relinquished that position, which he did not altogether enjoy,
for the chaplaincy of Belvoir, the residence of the Duke of Rut-
land. Neither was this post quite to the poet's taste, though he
held with it a living in Dorsetshire, offered him by Lord Thurlow.
It was at this juncture that the lady of his choice consented to
become his wife. The Duke went to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant,
but granted comfortable apartments at Belvoir Castle to his
chaplain during his absence. The Duke died in Dublin in 1787,
and Lord Thurlow added to his former favours by conferring upon
Crabbe the Rectory of Muston, in Leicestershire. Up to this time
he had only published one poem, The Newspaper, in addition to
those already mentioned, and now, for twenty- two years, he did not
publish anything. During this lengthy period he was completing
his education, and writing many works of various kinds, some of
which were destined to appear in print and some to be committed
to the flames. In 1807 he charmed the reading public by the
issue of the Parish Register, which Charles Fox had revised just
before his death. In 1810 The Borough followed. It is ' un-
rivalled for the stern fidelity of its interesting characters and the
graphic truth of its touching illustrations.' In 1812 appeared his
Tales in Verse, which, his son tells us, ' had the advantage of
ampler scope and development than his preceding works.'

It was at this stage in his eventful career- that his wife died.
He was greatly afflicted by the loss which he thus sustained.
Years afterwards, on visiting the scenes of his youth, he

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 305

wrote the following lines, which were not found until after his
death :

Yes, I behold again the place,

The seat of joy, the source of pain ;
It brings in view the form and face

That I must never see again.

The night-bird's song that sweetly floats

On this soft gloom — this balmy air,
Brings to the mind her sweeter notes

That I again must never hear.

Lo ! yonder shines that window's light.

My guide, my token heretofore ;
And now again it shines so bright

When those dear eyes can shine no more.

Then hurry from this place away !

It gives not now the bliss it gave ;
For Death has made its charm his prey,

And joy is buried in her grave.

Soon after his wife's death Crabbe was fortunately blessed with
a change of scene. The Duke of Rutland, son of his former
patron, presented him to the valuable living of Trowbridge,
where he spent the remaining eighteen years of his life. The
last of his works, published in 1819, was entitled Tales of the
Hall, and for it and the remaining copyright of all his previous
poems he received from John Murray the splendid remuneration
of ^"3,000. On the 3rd of February, 1832, he died, his final
utterance being, ' All is well at last.'

AUTUMNAL SKETCH

It was a fair and mild autumnal sky,

And earth's ripe treasures met the admiring eye.

As a rich beauty, when her bloom is lost,

Appears with more magnificence and cost :

The wet and heavy grass, where feet had stray'd,

Not yet erect, the wanderer's way betray'd ;

Showers of the night had swelled the deepening rill,

The morning breeze had urged the quickening mill ;

Assembled rooks had wing'd their seaward flight,

By the same passage to return at night,

While proudly o'er them hung the steady kite,

Then turn'd them back, and left the noisy throng,

Nor deign'd to know them as he sail'd along.

Long yellow leaves, from osiers, strew'd around,

Choked the dull stream, and hush'd its feeble sound,

While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees,

Our squire beheld not with his wonted ease ;

But to his own reflections made reply,

And said aloud, ' Yes ; doubtless we must die.'

20

306 A' HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

' We must,' said Richard ; ' and we would not live
To feel what dotage and decay will give ;
But we yet taste whatever we behold ;
The morn is lovely, though the air is cold :
There is delicious quiet in this scene,
At once so rich, so varied, so serene ;
Sounds, too, delight us — each discordant tone
Thus mingled, please, that fail to please alone ;
This hollow wind, this rustling of the brook,
The farm-yard noise, the woodman at yon oak —
See, the axe falls ! — now listen to the stroke !
That gun itself, that murders all this peace,
Adds to the charm, because it soon must cease.'

THE LIBRARY

When the sad soul, by care and grief oppress'd,

Looks round the world, but looks in vain for rest —

When every object that appears in view

Partakes her gloom, and seems dejected too ;

Where shall affliction from itself retire ?

Where fade away, and placidly expire ?

Alas ! we fly to silent scenes in vain,

Care blasts the honours of the flowery plain ;

Care veils in clouds the sun's meridian beam,

Sighs through the grove and murmurs in the stream ;

For when the soul is labouring in despair,

In vain the body breathes a purer air :

No storm- toss' d sailor sighs for slumbering seas,

He dreads the tempest, but invokes the breeze ;

On the smooth mirror of the deep resides

Reflected woe, and o'er unruffled tides

The ghost of every former danger glides.

Thus in the calm of life we only see

A steadier image of our misery ;

But lively gales, and gently clouded skies,

Disperse the sad reflections as they rise ;

And busy thoughts and little cares avail

To ease the mind, when rest and reason fail.

When the dull thought, by no designs employ'd,

Dwells on the past, or suffer'd or enjoy'd,

We bleed anew in every former grief,

And joys departed furnish no relief.

Not Hope itself, with all her flattering art,

Can cure this stubborn sickness of the heart ;

The soul disdains each comfort she prepares,

And anxious searches for congenial cares :

Those lenient cares which, with our own combin'd,

By mix'd sensations ease the afflicted mind,

And steal our grief away, and leave their own behind

A lighter grief ! which feeling hearts endure

Without regret, nor even demand a cure.

But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to change its native woes ?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
Others more wretched, more undone than we ?
This books can do ; — nor this alone ; they give
New views of life, and teach us how to live ;

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 307

They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise ;

Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise ;

Their aid they yield to all ; they never shun

The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone :

Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,

They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd ;

Nor tell to various people various things,

But show to subjects what they show to Kings.

CHARITY

An ardent spirit dwells with Christian love.
The eagle's vigour in the pitying dove ;
'Tis not enough that we with sorrow sigh,
That we the wants of pleading man supply,
That we in sympathy with sufferers feel,
Nor hear a grief without a wish to heal :
Not these suffice — to sickness, pain, and woe,
The Christian spirit loves with aid tc go ;
Will not be sought, waits not for Want to plead,
But seeks the duty — nay, prevents the need ;
Her utmost aid to every ill applies,
And plants relief for coming miseries.

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

1743-1825

' KNOWN to the literary world as one of the most classical,
elegant, and useful writers of her time,' Anna Letitia Barbauld
was born on the 2oth of June, 1743, at Kibworth Harcourt in
Leicestershire. She was the eldest child of John Aikin, a dissent-
ing minister, who conducted a private school in that place. Her
early love for learning is thus described by her mother :

' I once knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her
instructors could be to teach her ; and who, at two years old,
could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly,
without spelling, and in half a year more could read as well as
most women.' This might be difficult to believe were it not for
the fact that the mother herself was the instructor from the first ;
the father, a man of considerable attainments, superintending
her studies in the higher branches of learning in after-years.
She married the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, who became the
minister of a chapel at Palgrave, near Diss, in Suffolk, and
afterwards removed to a charge at Newington. Her chief efforts

20 — 2

308 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

in verse are contained in a volume entitled Miscellaneous Poems,
which appeared in 1773, a year before her marriage. She died
at Stoke Newington in 1825, in her eighty-second year. A
collection of her works was published after her death by her
brother's family. The hymns of Mrs. Barbauld are deservedly
popular, and her talents have been thus described by her niece,
Lucy Aiken, who has written the story of her life :

' The classical elegance and correctness, the brilliancy and
play of fancy, the elevation of sentiment, the love of freedom,
and the high devotional spirit which breathe through the strains
of this accomplished poet, give a true picture of her mind and
manners. She was alike free from vanity, from pride, and from
envy ; candid, mild, and courteous ; she won general esteem ;
and such was her constancy and fidelity that she was never
known to alienate a friend or drop a friendship.' Her beautiful
poem on The Death of the Righteous is counted amongst the gems
of English sacred poetry, and has been thought supremely ap-
plicable to her own calm passage to ' the grave and gate of

death.'

Sweet is the scene when virtue dies !

When sinks a righteous soul to rest,
How mildly beam the closing eyes,

How gently heaves th' expiring breast.

So fades a summer cloud away ;

So sinks the gale when storms are o'er ;
So gently shuts the eye of day ;

So dies the wave along the shore.

Triumphant smiles the victor brow,
Fanned by some angel's purple wing ;

Where is, O Grave ! thy victory now ;
And where, insidious Death, thy sting ?

The following stanza from a poem entitled Life was much
admired by Wordsworth :

Life ! we've been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ;
'Tis hard to part when friend,s are dear ;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ;
Then steal away, give little warning,

Choose thine own time,

Say not ' Good-night,' but in some brighter clime
Bid me ' Good-morning.'

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 309

SCOTTISH POETS

ALLAN RAMSAY

1686-1758

' Here, 'midst those scenes that taught thy Doric muse
Her sweetest song — the hills, the woods, the streams,
Where beauteous Peggy stray'd, listening the while
Her " Gentle Shepherd's " tender tale of love —
Scenes which thy pencil, true to nature, gave
To live for ever — sacred be this shrine,
And unprofahed by ruder hands, the stone,
That owes its honours to thy deathless name.'

FRAZER TYTLER.

ALLAN RAMSAY, one of the greatest of Scottish poets, was the son
of a workman in the lead-mines of Lord Hopetoun, who lived
in homely fashion on the high mountains that divide Annandale
from Clydesdale, in Lanarkshire. In a lonely cottage, whose ruins
are still the scene of many a pilgrimage, the subject of this memoir
was born on the I5th of October, 1686. Allan was employed in
childhood in assisting to wash the ore. He was sent to the parish
school, in which institution he was made acquainted with little,
if anything, beyond ' the three R's.' He also acted in the
capacity of a shepherd until he was fifteen years of age, an occupa-
tion which doubtless laid the foundation of that accurate know-
ledge of rural life which characterizes his celebrated work, The
Gentle Shepherd. While he was yet a boy his father died, and
his mother became the wife of a small farmer in Lanarkshire.
As might be expected, Allan's stepfather was anxious to get rid
of him as soon as possible, and he was accordingly bound appren-
tice to a hairdresser in Edinburgh. He applied himself with
creditable diligence to his humble duties, and in time was
able to start in the business on his own account.

There seems to be some doubt as to whether this celebrated
man combined shaving with wig-making. But it is argued that
shaving and wig-making certainly were always united in Scotland,
and there is no ground for supposing that the poet was an excep-
tion to the general rule. It is greatly to the credit of Ramsay
that he was not in the least ashamed of his calling, but he had,
nevertheless, ambitions beyond its range. He strove to satisfy
this by devoting his leisure time to the careful perusal of such
works as might prove helpful to him in his career as a poet. In

3io A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

the year 1712 he married an Edinburgh lady named Christian
Ross, the daughter of a writer to the signet. By her he had
eight children, the eldest of whom was a son who rose to eminence
as a portrait-painter, and was employed professionally by King
George III. After his marriage Ramsay began to attract
considerable attention by his poems, and gained an entry into
the clubs and literary circles of Edinburgh. Added to this, his
undoubted talents and pleasing personality had secured for him
the friendship of many people of high rank and cultivated taste.
He made a special study of the writings of Dryden, Pope, Gay,
and Prior. In later years he abandoned his original calling, and
set up a book-shop, in connection with which he established the
first circulating library in Scotland.

Ramsay's religious views were not moulded on the stringent
pattern of his fellow-countrymen in general. He resented the
prevalent idea that the drama was dangerous to the piety and
morals of the community. In the year 1736 he fitted up a theatre
at his own expense, and thereby raised a storm about his head.
In the following year the magistrates of Edinburgh, empowered
by the Licensing Act, compelled him to shut it up, thereby almost
ruining him financially. But he survived the reverse, built a
villa on the Castle Hill, and lived out his days in domestic comfort
and literary activity. The villa, from its peculiar shape, is known
to the irreverent as the Goose-pie, and to the serious as ' Ramsay
Garden.' The poet died at the age of seventy- two, on the 7th of
January, 1758.

The Gentle Shepherd is a poem of great beauty, being a pastoral
drama which will bear comparison with anything of its kind in
any language. It describes in masterly fashion the glorious
picturesqueness of the scenery of rural Scotland, and the manners
and customs of its rustic people. The songs which are inter-
spersed here and there throughout the poem are remarkable for
their natural simplicity and rhythmical sweetness. The com-
plete work was published in 1725.

RUSTIC COURTSHIP

Hear how I served my lass I lo'e as weel
As ye do, Jenny, and wi' heart as leal.
Last morning I was gye and early out,
Upon a dike I leaned, glow'ring about ;
I saw my Meg come linkin' o'er the lea ;
I saw my Meg, but Meggy saw na me ;

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

For yet the sun was wading through the mist,

And she was close upon me ere she wist.

Her coats were kiltit, and did sweetly shaw

Her straight bare legs, that whiter were than snaw ;

Her cockernony snooded up fu' sleek,

Her haffet locks hang waving on her cheek ;

Her cheeks sae ruddy, and her een sae clear ;

And oh ! her mouth's like ony hinny pear.

Neat, neat she was, in bustine waistcoat clean,

As she same skipping o'er the dewy green.

Blithsome, I cried : ' My bonny Meg, come here,

I ferly wherefore ye're so soon asteer ;

But I can guess ; ye're gaun to gather dew.'

She scoured away, and said : ' What's that to you ?'

' Then, fare ye well, Meg Dorts, and e'en's ye like,'

I careless cried, and lap in o'er the dike.

I trow, when that she saw, within a crack,

She came with a right thieveless errand back ;

Misca'd me first, then bade me hound my dog,

To wear up three waff ewes strayed on the bog.

I leugh ; and sae did she ; then wi' great haste

I clasped my arms about her neck and waist ;

About her yielding waist, and took a fouth

O' sweetest kisses frae her glowing mouth.

While hard and fast I held her in my grips,

My very soul came louping to my lips.

Sair, sair she flet wi' me 'tween ilka smack,

But weel I kend she meant nae as she spak.

Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom,

Do ye sae too, and never fash your thumb.

Seem to forsake her, soon she'll change her mood ;

Gae woo anither, and she'll gang clean wud.

LOCHABER NO MORE

Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,
Where heartsome with thee I've mony day been ;
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.
These tears that I shed, they are a' for my dear,
And no for the dangers attending on weir ;
Though borne on rough seas to a far bloody shore,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.

Though hurricanes rise, and rise every wind,
They'll ne'er mak a tempest like that in my mind ;
Though loudest o' thunder on louder waves roar,
That's naething like leaving my love on the shore.
To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained,
By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained ;
And beauty and love's the reward of the brave,
And I must deserve it before I can crave.

Then glory, my Jeanie, maun plead my excuse ;
Since honour commands me, how can I refuse ?
Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee,
And without thy favour I'd better not be.
I gae then, my lass, to win honour and fame,
And if I should luck to come gloriously hame,
I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er.
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more.

312 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

DESCRIPTION OF HIMSELF

Imprimis, then, for tallness, I

Am five foot and four inches high ;

A black-a-vised1 snod dapper fellow,

Nor lean, nor overlaid wi' tallow ;

With phiz of a morocco cut,

Resembling a late man of wit,

Auld gabbet Spec,2 who was so cunning

To be a dummie ten years running.

Then for the fabric of my mind,

'Tis mair to mirth than grief inclined :

I rather choose to laugh at folly,

Than show dislike by melancholy ;

Well judging a sour heavy face

Is not the truest mark of grace.

I hate a drunkard or a glutton,

Yet I'm nae fae to wine and mutton ;

Great tables ne'er engaged my wishes,

When crowded with o'er mony dishes ;

A healthfu' stomach, sharply set,

Prefers a back-sey3 piping het.

I never could imagine 't vicious

Of a fair fame to be ambitious :

Proud to be thought a comic poet,

And let a judge of numbers know it,

I court occasion thus to show it.

THE REV. ROBERT BLAIR
1699-1746

IF Robert Blair had not written his famous poem The Grave,
his other works would not have called particular attention to his
talents as a writer of verse. He was born in Edinburgh in the
year 1699. His father was the Rev. David Blair, minister of the
Old Church of that metropolis, and a Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the
King. Robert lost his father when he was a child, and his educa-
tion was conducted with great care by his mother. Early in life
he went to Holland to complete his classical education. On his
return to Edinburgh, he published some slight poems, which did
not receive much attention, though they were not without pro-
mise. He became a minister of the Scotch Church, and in 1731,
when he was thirty-one years of age, he was appointed to the
charge of Athelstaneford, a parish in East Lothian. His talents
attracted the attention of Dr. Watts and Dr. Doddridge, with
whom he frequently corresponded. He married, and had several

1 Dark-complexioned. 2 The Spectator, No. i, byj^Addison.

:! A sirloin.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 313

children, his fourth son rising to be Lord President of the Court
of Session. The poet died on the 4th of February, 1746, in his
fortj/seventh year.

It was during his student days that Blair wrote The Grave,
but it was not published until 1743. At first it did not make
much impression on the public mind, but in a very short time its
unquestionable merits began to be more fully appreciated, and
the reputation of its author became firmly established. Burns
frequently refers to it in terms of praise, and quotes it in some of
his letters. It is remarkable for its pathos, originality, wealth
of imagery, gentleness of feeling, and purity of moral tone. It
has been accused of gloominess, but has never been charged
with dulness. It is a notable fact that it was declined at first by
London publishers as a doubtful speculation, but has, since its
first appearance, gone through very many editions.

DEATH

How shocking must thy summons be, O Death 1
To him that is at ease in his possessions ;
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnish'd for that world to come !
In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement,
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help,
But shrieks in vain ! How wishfully she looks
On all she's leaving, now no longer hers !
A little longer, yet a little longer,
Oh might she stay to wash away her stains,
And fit her for her passage ! Mournful sight !
Her very eyes weep blood ; and every groan
She heaves is big with horror : but the foe,
Like a stanch murderer, steady to his purpose.
Pursues her close through every lane of life,
Nor misses once the track, but presses on ;
Till, forced at last to the tremendous verge,
At once she sinks to everlasting ruin !

* * * * *

If death were nothing, and nought after death ;

If, when men died, at once they ceased to be,

Returning to the barren womb of nothing,

Whence first they sprung ; then might the debauchee

Untrembling mouth the heavens ; then might the drunkard

Reel over his full bowl, and, when 'tis drain'd,

Fill up another to the brim, and laugh

At the poor bugbear, Death ; then might the wretch

That's weary of the world, and tired of life,

At once give each inquietude the slip,

By stealing out of being when he pleased,

And by what way, whether by hemp or steel :

Death's thousand doors stand open. Who could force

The ill-pleased guest to sit out his full time,

314 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Or blame him if he goes ? Sure he does well.
That helps himself as timely as he can,
When able. But, if there's an hereafter —
And that there is, conscience, uninfluenced,
And suffer'd to speak out, tells ev'ry man-
Then must it be an awful thing to die :
More horrid yet to die by one's own hand !
Self-murder f Name it not, our island's shame
That makes her the reproach of neighb'ring states.
Shall Nature, swerving from her earliest dictate,
Self-preservation, fall by her own act ?
Forbid it, Heaven ! Let not, upon disgust,
The shameless hand be foully crimson' d o'er
With blood of its own lord. Dreadful attempt !
Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage
To rush into the presence of our Judge ;
As if we challenged Him to do His worst,
And matter'd not His wrath ! Unheard-of tortures
Must be reserved for such : these herd together.
The common damn'd shun their society,
And look upon themselves as fiends less foul.
Our time is fix'd, and all our days are number'd ;
How long, how short, we know not :— this we know.
Duty requires we calmly wait the summons,
Nor dare to stir till Heaven shall give permission :
Like sentries that must keep their destined stand,
And wait th' appointed hour, till they're relieved.
Those only are the brave who keep their ground,
And keep it to the last. To run away
From this world's ills, that, at the very worst,
Will soon blow o'er, thinking to mend ourselves
By boldly venturing on a world unknown,
And plunging headlong in the dark ; 'tis mad !
No frenzy half so desperate as this.

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship ! mysterious cement of the soul !

Sweet'ner of life, and solder of society !

I owe thee much. Thou hast deserved of me

Far, far beyond whatever I can pay.

Oft have I proved the labours of thy love,

And the warm efforts of the gentle heart,

Anxious to please. O ! when my friend and I .

In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on,

Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down

Upon the sloping cowslip-covered bank,

Where the pure limpid stream has slid along,

In grateful errors through the underwood,

Sweet murmuring, methought the shrill-tongued thrush

Mended his song of love ; the sooty blackbird

Mellow'd his pipe, and soften'd every note ;

The eglantine smell'd sweeter, and the rose

Assumed a die more deep ; whilst every flower

Vied with his fellow-plant in luxury

Of dress. O ! then the longest summer's day

Seem'd too, too much in haste ; still the full heart

Had not imparted half — 'tis happiness

Too exquisite to last !

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 315

DESCRIPTION OF A CATHEDRAL AT MIDNIGHT

See yonder hallow'd fane ! the pious work

Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot,

And buried 'midst the wreck of things which were :

There lie interred the most illustrious dead.

The wind is up : hark ! how it howls ! methinks

Till now I never heard a sound so dreary ! ,

Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird,

Rock'd in the spire, screams loud : the gloomy aisles,

Black-plastered, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons,

And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound.

Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults,

The mansions of the dead. Roused from their slumbers,

In grim array the grisly spectres rise,

Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen,

Pass and repass, hushed as the foot of night.

Again the screech-owl shrieks — ungracious sound !

I'll hear no more ; it makes one's blood run chill !

JAMES THOMSON
1700-1748

THE author of The Seasons was born at Ednam, near Kelso, in
Roxburghshire. His father was the minister of the parish, and
the future poet was destined at first to follow the same profession.
But his poetic instincts and aspirations, which had shown them-
selves when he was quite a boy, led him to abandon the idea.
After receiving his education in Edinburgh, he migrated to
London, and began a literary career. He had already sketched
out a considerable portion of his poem on Winter. This he showed
to Mallet, who was held in high repute as a critic, and by whom
he was strongly urged to complete and publish it. In early days
he acted as tutor to the son of Lord Binning, subsequently acting
as travelling companion to the son of Lord Chancellor Talbot.
In this capacity he went to Italy for awhile, after which, in 1726,
he published his poem on Winter. This work was received with
very great favour by the reading public, and obtained for him the
praise and friendship of Pope and other men of distinction in the
literary world. It is said that Pope, who was then facile princeps
amongst living writers, not only favoured Thomson with excellent
advice, but even went so far as to correct and improve upon his
manuscript. Summer appeared in 1727, and Spring and Autumn
soon followed, thus completing the set of poems with which the
name of James Thomson is most closely identified in the mind of
every student of literature.

316 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Talbot, the Chancellor, bestowed upon Thomson a sinecure
office, which rendered him independent as long as he held it,
but on the death of his patron he lost it, a fact for which his
indolence has been held accountable. Other offices of a like
nature were bestowed upon him. At length he retired to a com-
fortable cottage near Richmond, where he lived ' in modest
luxury and literary ease.' He died, at the comparatively early
age of forty-eight, from the effects of a cold caught in boating on
the Thames.

He was buried at Richmond, and a monument was erected to
his memory in Westminster Abbey in 1762, with the profits
arising from an edition of his works published by Millar.

Speaking of Thomson's first arrival in London, friendless and
homeless, with no definite object except to search for fortune,
Dr. Johnson tells the following story :

' He was one day loitering about with the gaping curiosity of
a new-comer, his attention upon everything rather than his
pocket, when his handkerchief, containing his letters of recom-
mendation to several persons of consequence, was stolen from
him ; and now the lonely poet, in the vast city, first felt his in-
experience and his poverty. A pair of shoes was his first want,
his manuscript of the poem on Winter his only property.' As is
frequently the case with works of prose and poetry which are
destined to be famous, it was rejected by several publishers at'
first. At length the author unwisely sold the copyright to a
publisher for the trifling sum of three guineas. But Sir Spencer
Compton, to whom it was dedicated, made Thomson a present
of twenty guineas. The Earl of Minto, in his charming biography
of Thomson, tells the following amusing anecdote :

' Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Minto, afterwards Lord Justice Clerk,
a man of elegant taste, was an early friend of Thomson ; and
when the first edition of The Seasons came out, the author sent
a copy, handsomely bound, to Sir Gilbert, who showed it to a
relation of Thomson's, a gardener at Minto. The man took the
book into his hands, and, turning it over and over, gazed on it
with admiration, on which Sir Gilbert said to him, " Well, David,
what do you think of James Thomson now ? There's a book
will make him famous all the world over, and immortalize his
name." David, looking now at Sir Gilbert and now at the
book, said, "In troth, sir, it is a grand book! I did na'

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 317

think the lad was so clever as to ha' done sic neat a piece of
handicraft." :

Dr. Johnson, Dr. Aikin, Coleridge, Campbell, and other eminent
critics, have paid high tributes to the poetical genius of Thomson.
Campbell has adequately and eloquently described the beauties
of his descriptive passages in the following terms :

' Habits of early admiration teach us all to look back upon
this poet as the favourite companion of our solitary walks, and
as the author who has first or chiefly reflected back to our minds
a heightened or refined sensation of the delight which rural scenery
affords us. The judgment of cooler years may somewhat abate
our estimation of him, though it will still leave us the essential
features of his poetical character to abide the test of reflection.
The unvaried pomp of his diction suggests a most unfavourable
comparison with the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper ;
at the same time, the pervading spirit and feeling of his poetry
is in general more bland and delightful than that of his great rival
in rural description. Thomson seems to contemplate the creation
with an eye of unqualified pleasure and ecstasy, and to love its
inhabitants with a lofty and hallowed feeling of religious happi-
ness. Cowper also has his philanthropy, but it is dashed with
religious terrors, and with themes of satire, regret, and reprehen-
sion. Cowper's image of Nature is more curiously distinct and
familiar. Thomson carries our associations through a wider
circuit of speculation and sympathy. His touches cannot bp
more faithful than Cowper's, but they are more soft and select,
and less disturbed by the intrusion of homely objects./ It is but
justice to say that amidst the feeling of fancy of The Seasons
we meet with interruptions of declamations, heavy narrative,
and unhappy digression — with a parhelion eloquence that throws
a counterfeit glow of expression on commonplace ideas — as when
he treats us to the solemnly ridiculous bathing of Musidora, or
draws from the classics instead of Nature ; or, after invoking
inspiration from her hermit seat, makes his dedicatory bow to
a patronizing countess or Speaker of the House of Commons.
As long as he dwells in the pure contemplation of Nature, and
appeals to the universal poetry of the human breast, his redun-
dant style comes to us as something venial and adventitious — it
is the flowing vesture of the Druid, and perhaps to the general
experience is rather imposing ; but when he returns to the familiar

3i8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

relations and courtesies of life, the same diction ceases to have
the mantle of inspiration, and only strikes us by its unwieldy
difference from the common costume of expression.'

A lengthened criticism is due to one who has been justly called
the best of our descriptive poets, though some have maintained
that he is excelled in the power of rural description by Cowper.
But we must remember that The Seasons was the first poem of its
kind, and therefore the author was unaided by that inspiration
which is afforded by previous models. It must therefore be
accredited with the virtue of spontaneity, in addition to its other
excellences.

Thomson's other works comprise the Castle of Indolence, a
delightful, half-playful poem, which has by some critics been
placed above The Seasons in order of merit. It is an imitation
of the style and manner of Spenser. It certainly contains many
magnificent passages. Liberty is an ambitious and not altogether
successful poem, of which Dr. Johnson said, ' I tried to read it,
and soon desisted. I have never tried again, and therefore will not
hazard either praise or blame.' His last work was a tragedy called
Coriolanus, published in May, 1748, two months before his death.

Thomson is said to have been an excellent son, an affectionate
brother, and a sincere friend. He was generous to literary
associates who were in poor circumstances, and Savage was one
of those whom he often helped. He was indolent, and carried his'
fondness for the good things of life to the verge of intemperance.
The following story is told of him by Tuckerman, an American
critic :

' A literary lady invited him to pass the summer at her country
seat, but, instead of flattering her intellectual propensity by sage
conversation, he preferred to sip wine with her husband, and so
lost the favour of a countess. He was once seen to bite the sunny
side out of a peach with his hands in his pockets. A lover of
music, he did not fatigue himself with blowing a flute or flourish-
ing a fiddle-bow, but kept an Jiolian harp in his window, and
listened to the nightingales.

Lend me your song, ye nightingales ! oh pour
The mazy running soul of melody
Into my varied verse.

He courted the great for patronage, rather than seek toilsome
gains by the industrious exercise of his powers.'

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 319

The poet Collins has paid this tribute to the memory of this
illustrious singer :

' In yonder grave a Druid lies,

Where slowly winds the stealing wave ;
The year's best sweets shall duteous rise

To deck its poet's sylvan grave.
Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest,
And oft suspend the dripping oar,

To bid his gentle spirit rest.'

FROM HYMN ON • THE SEASONS '

These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and )ove.
Wide flush the fields ; the softening air is balm ;
Echo the mountains round ; the forest smiles ;
And every sense, and every heart, is joy.
Then comes Thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year ;
And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks ;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.
Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfmed,
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
In Winter awful Thou ! With clouds and storms
Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest roll'd,
Majestic darkness ! on the whirlwind's wing
Riding sublime, Thou bidd'st the world adore,
And humblest nature with Thy northern blast.

FROM 'SPRING'

See where the winding vale its lavish stores,

Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lily drinks

The latent rill, scarce oozing through the grass,

Of growth luxuriant ; or the humid bank

In fair profusion decks. Long let us walk,

Where the breeze blows from yon extended field

Of blossom'd beans. Arabia cannot boast

A fuller gale of joy, than, liberal, thence

Breathes through the sense, and takes the ravish'd soul.

Nor is the mead unworthy of thy foot,

Full of fresh verdure, and unnumbered flowers,

The negligence of Nature, wide and wild ;

Where, undisguised by mimic Art, she spreads

Unbounded beauty to the roving eye.

Here their delicious task the fervent bees,

In swarming millions, tend : around, athwart,

Through the soft air, the busy nations fly,

Cling to the bud, and, with inserted tube.

Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul ;

And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare

The purple heath, or where the wild thyme grows,

And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.

320 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

DAWN IN SUMMER

When now no more th' alternate Twins are fired,

And Cancer reddens with the solar blaze,

Short is the doubtful empire of the Night,

And soon, observant of approaching Day,

The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of dews.

At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east ;

Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow ;

And, from before the lustre of her face,

White break the clouds away. With quicken'd step,

Brown Night retires : young Day pours in apace.

And opens all the lawny prospect wide.

The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top,

Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn.

Blue, through the dusk, the smoking currents shine ;

And from the bladed field the fearful hare

Limps awkward ; while along th'e forest-glade

The wild deer trip, and often turning, gaze

At early passenger. Music awakes

The native voice of undissembled joy ;

And thick around the woodland hymns arise.

Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves

His mossy cottage, where with Peace he dwells ;

And from the crowded fold, in order, drives

His flock, to taste the verdure of the morn.

FROM THE ' CASTLE OF INDOLENCE '

Behold ! ye pilgrims of this earth, behold !

See all but man with unearn'd pleasure gay :
See her bright robes the butterfly unfold,

Broke from her wintry tomb in prime of May !
What youthful bride can equal her array ?

Who can with her for easy pleasure vie ?
From mead to mead with gentle wing to stray,

From flower to flower on balmy gales to fly,

Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky.

Behold the merry minstrels of the morn,

The swarming songsters of the careless grove ;

Ten thousand throats that, from the flowering thorn,
Hymn their good God, and carol sweet of love ;

Such grateful kindly raptures them emove !
They neither plough nor sow ; ne, fit for flail.

E'er to the barn the nodding sheaves they drove :
Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale,
Whatever crowns the hill, or smiles along the vale.

Outcast of nature, man ! the wretched thrall
Of bitter-dropping sweat, of sweltry pain,

Of cares that eat away the heart with gall,
And of the vices, an inhuman train,

That all proceed from savage thirst of gain :
For when hard-hearted Interest first began

To poison earth, Astraea left the plain ;
Guile, Violence, and Murder seized on man,
And, for soft milky streams, with blood the rivers ran.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 321

EVENING IN AUTUMN

The western sun withdraws the shorten'd day,

And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky

In her chill progress, to the ground condensed

The vapours throws. Where creeping waters ooze.

Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,

Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along

The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the Moon,

Full-orb'd, and breaking through the scatter'd clouds,

Shows her broad visage in the crimson east.

Turn'd to the Sun direct, her spotted disk —

Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,

And caverns 'deep, as optic tube descries,

A smaller earth — gives all his blaze again,

Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.

Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop }

Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.

Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild

O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale,

While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam,

The whole air whitens with a boundless tide

Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.

ROBERT BURNS

1759-1796

ALMOST by universal consent, the chief place amongst the poets
of Scotland is assigned to Robert Burns, the ' Ploughman Bard.'
He was the son of a yeoman farmer, and was born near Kirk
Alloway, in Ayrshire, in the year 1759. In early life he worked
as a labourer on his father's farm, but his education was not
entirely neglected. Mr. Shaw points out that ' popular educa-
tion was at that period far more generally diffused in Scotland
than in any other country in Europe ; and the future glory of his
nation was able to acquire, partly by the wise care of his father
and partly by his own avidity for knowledge, a degree of intel-
lectual culture which would have been surprising in any other
country.' His father's talents were of a superior order ; he had
read many books with the carefulness of a student ; he was
pious, sincere, and upright in his dealings ; and he was punc-
tilious in promoting the spiritual and intellectual advancement
of his children. Robert says of him in one of his poems :

My father was a farmer, upon the Carrick border, O ;
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O ;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing, O ;
- For without an honest, manly heart, no man is worth regarding, O.

21

322 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

His mother was in her way a remarkable woman, possessing
powers of mind above the average of women in her station in life.
Her influence upon her poet son was of the best and gentlest.
In a letter to Dr. Moore, Burns gives some interesting details of
his early life. It appears from this document that he was placed
at school in the sixth year of his age, under the care of a master
named Campbell. A few months later he was transferred to
the care of John Murdoch, who was a very conscientious and
painstaking teacher. Gilbert Burns was also one of Murdoch's
pupils, and, after the death of Robert, the tutor published an
account of the impressions which the two brothers made upon
him.

It is always a matter of special interest to trace, when possible,
the circumstances which first lead a poetic mind to clothe its
thoughts in verse. Robert Burns tells us that he traces the
formation of his character as a poet to the influence of a super-
stitious old woman who resided with his family, and who used
to excite his youthful imagination by narrating extraordinary
stories of ghosts, fairies, witches, and giants, and singing wild
and romantic songs.

Robert was at this period of his life a very diligent student
in a wider field of learning than wa,s afforded by his ordinary
school-books. Mason's English Collection, The Life of Hannibal,
Addison's Hymns and Allegorical Tales, and the History of Sir
William Wallace were amongst the works which he read most
carefully. His father taught him arithmetic in the evenings,
and subsequently the future poet acquired a smattering of
algebra, geometry, surveying, and French. He tried to learn
Latin, but failed in the attempt through want of a teacher.
Before he was sixteen years of age he had read most of the prin-
cipal standard works in English literature, a good deal of history,
and the poetical works of Shakespeare, Pope, Allan Ramsay,
Thomson, and Shenstone. He delighted in poetry, and always
carried a volume of verse about with him. ' The collection of
songs/ he says, ' was my vade mecum. I pored over them,
driving my cart or walking to labour, song by song, verse by
verse, carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime from the
affectation or fustian ; and I am convinced I owe to this practice
much of my critic-craft, such as it is.'

The details of the poet's life, apart from his achievements in

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 323

literature, are not pleasant to dwell upon. His constant struggles
with poverty, his indiscretions and excesses, so strangely incon-
sistent with the natural dignity of his character and the bene-
volence of his heart, all are so well known that they need not be
dilated upon here. His story is a melancholy one. With regard
to his character, Irving, one of his numerous biographers, ob-
serves : ' To counterbalance his errors, he was unquestionably
possessed of noble virtues ; and although it can never be justifi-
able to write an apology for vice, it may at least be deemed par-
donable to offer some palliation for the backslidings of a man so
fatally exposed to untoward accidents. Impartiality of judg-
ment it can never be preposterous to exercise, but rigid and un-
relenting scrutiny is not the province of those who are aware of
the general lot of humanity, and of their individual breaches
of the multifarious duties which religion and morality im-
pose.'

Suffice it, then, to say that, as a result of indiscreet and occa-
sionally intemperate living, the poet, after a brief term of un-
bounded popularity, died in destitution on the 2ist of July,
1796, being then in the thirty-eighth year of his age. The poet
Wordsworth, who was the author of a touching and eloquent
defence of Burns, on visiting that poet's grave in 1803, wrote the
following lines :

Let no mean hope your souls enslave — •
Be independent, generous, brave —
Your poet such example gave,

And such revere ;
But be admonished by his grave,

And think and fear.

Amongst the many poetical tributes to the memory of this son
of song, which would in themselves make a respectable volume
of verse, we may also quote the lines of Campbell :

Farewell, high chief of Scottish song !
Thou couldst alternately impart
Wisdom and rapture in thy page,
And brand each vice with satire strong
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart.
Whose truths electrify the sage.

Farewell ! and ne'er may envy dare
To wring one baleful poison drop
From 'the crush'd laurels of thy bust :
But while the lark sings sweet in air,
Still may the grateful pilgrim stop,
To bless the spot that holds thy dust.

21 — 2

324 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

When Burns' poems were published, in 1786, they were received
by the general public with unbounded enthusiasm. The peasant-
poet was feted as a phenomenon, and became the petted idol of
Edinburgh Society. A second edition was soon called for, and
for a time Burns was placed above the reach of want. But before
he died he had wasted all his gains.

Dr. Craik, in his Sketches of the History of Literature, gives high
praise to the poetical genius of Burns. He gives the palm of
superiority to his lyrical pieces. ' Even out of his own country,'
he says, ' his songs, to be sure, have taken all hearts ; and they
are the very flame-breath of his own. No truer poetry exists
in any language or in any form. But it is the poetry of the heart
much more than of either the head or the imagination. Burns'
songs do not at all resemble the exquisite lyrical snatches with
which Shakespeare, and also Beaumont and Fletcher, have
sprinkled some of their dramas, enlivening the busy scene and
progress of the action as the progress of the wayfarer is enlivened
by the voices of birds in the hedgerows, or the sight and scent of
wild-flowers that have sprung up by the roadside. They are never
in any sense exercises of ingenuity, but always utterances of
passion, and simple and direct as a shout of laughter or a gush of
tears. Whatever they have of fancy, whatever they have of
melody, is born of real emotion — is merely the natural expression
of the poet's feeling at the moment, seeking and finding vent in-
musical words. Since " burning Sappho .loved and sung " in
the old isles of Greece, not much poetry has been produced so
thrillingly tender as some of the best of these songs.'

In Morley's Men of Letters series, Principal Shairp, then Pro-
fessor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, attempts to sum up
the peculiar genius of the poet much on the same general lines
as Thomas Carlyle :

' At the basis of all his power lay absolute truthfulness, intense
reality — truthfulness to the objects which he saw, truthfulness
to himself as the seer of them. . . . Here was a man, a son of
toil, looking out on the world from his cottage- — on society high
or low, on nature homely or beautiful, wi th the clearest eye, the
most piercing insight, the warmest heart ; touching life at a
hundred points, seeing to the core all the sterling worth, nor less
the pretence and hollowness of the men he met, the humour, the
drollery, the pathos and the sorrow of human existence, and

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 325

expressing what he saw, not in the stock phrase of books, but in
his own vernacular, the language of his fireside, with a directness,
a force, a vitality that tingled to the finger-tips, and forced the
phrases of his peasant's dialect into literature, and made them
for ever classical. Large sympathy, generous enthusiasm, reck-
less abandonment, fierce indignation, melting passion, rare flashes
of moral insight, all were there. Everywhere you see the strong
intellect made alive and driven home to the mark by the fervid
heart behind it.'

Thomas Carlyle's Essay on Burns appeared in the Edinburgh
Review as long ago as 1828. Although it was one of the earliest
of his literary efforts, it is characteristic of its author. It is
always interesting to see what one man of genius thinks of another
man of genius, and in Carlyle's Essay we have the greatest
Scotchman of this century delivering judgment upon the greatest
Scotchman of last century — Sir Walter Scott, of course, excepted,
for he was of both centuries and for all time. Carlyle's verdict
is that ' in sober judgments Burns appears not only as a true
British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of
the eighteenth century.' There are those who complain that
his poems are imperfect and of small extent, and that his genius
attained no mastery in its art. ' Alas ! his sun shone as through
a tropical tornado ; and the pale shadow of death eclipsed it at
noon ! Shrouded in such baleful vapours, the genius of Burns
was never seen in tlear azure splendour, enlightening the world,
but some beams from it did by fits pierce through ; and it tinted
those clouds with rainbow and orient colours into glory and a
stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and
tears !'

Carlyle then discusses the secret of this abiding popularity.
He finds the explanation first in the sincerity of his poetry,
then in the naturalness of his muse and the familiarity of
his themes.

' He shows himself a poet of Nature's own making ; and
Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets. A
Scottish peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives,
till Burns became a poet in it and a poet of it ; found it a man's
life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand battlefields
remain unsung ; but the Wounded Hare has not perished without
its memorial ; a balm of mercy yet breathes on us from its dumb

326 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

agonies, because a poet was there. Our Halloween had passed
and repassed, in rude awe and laughter, since the era of the
Druids ; but no Theocritus, till Burns, discerned in it the materials
of a Scottish Idyll ; neither was the Holy Fair any Council of
Trent or Roman Jubilee ; but nevertheless, Superstition and
Hypocrisy and Fun, having been propitious to him, in this man's
hand it became a poem, instinct with satire and genuine comic
life.'

Burns did much for what is known as the romantic movement.
He was not the first to versify the dialect of the Scottish
peasantry, but he was unquestionably the first to lift it into the
higher realms of poetry. All critics will agree that he takes his
place in this respect with the greatest masters of the art — and the
masters of this particular art are not many in number.

' But, splendid as is his passionate poetry,' says Mr. Watts-
Dunton in a really great essay on The Renascence of Wonder in
Poetry, ' it is specially as an absolute humorist that he towers
above all the poets of the eighteenth century. Undoubtedly,
to get away on all occasions from the shadow of the great social
pyramid was not to be expected of a poet at the time and in the
condition in which Burns was born. Yet it is astonishing how
this Scottish yeoman did get away from it at times, as in A
Man's a Man for a that. It is astonishing to realize how he
was able to show a feeling for absolute humour such as in the
eighteenth century had only been shown by prose writers —
prose writers of the first rank — like Swift and Sterne. Indeed,
if we did not remember that he followed the creator of Uncle
Toby, he would take, if that were possible, a still higher place
than he now does as an absolute humorist. Not even Uncle
Toby's apostrophe to the fly is finer than Burns' lines to a mouse
on turning her up with a plough. But his lines to a mountain
daisy which he had turned down with the plough are full of
deeper humour still — a humorous sympathy with the vege-
table no less than with the anirnal kingdom. There is nothing
in all poetry which touches it.'

This is high, some may think even exaggerated, praise. But
the genius which can turn small and commonplace things to
account in so great a way is worthy to take even higher rank
as genius than that which merely translates into a new phrase
what is already acknowledged to be great.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 327
TO A MOUSE

ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH

November, 1785

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie !
O, what a panic's in thy breastie !
Thou need na start awa sae hastie,

Wi' bickering brattle !
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee.

Wi' murd'rin pattle.

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An' fellow-mortal.

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve :
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live !
A daimenicker in a thrave

'S a sma' request :
I'll get a blessing wi' the lave,

An' never miss't.

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin !
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin' !
An' naething now to big a new ane

O' foggage green !
An' bleak December's winds ensuin',

Baith snell an' keen !

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash ! the cruel coulter past

Out through thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble !
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,

But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble.

An' cranreuch cauld !

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain :
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley,
And lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy.

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me '
The present only toucheth thee :
But, och ! I backward cast my e'e,

On prospects drear !
And forward, though I canna see,

I guess an' fear.

328 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

THE AULD FARMER'S NEW-YEAR MORNING SALUTATION TO
HIS AULD MARE MAGGIE

ON GIVING HER THE ACCUSTOMED RlPP OF CORN TO HANSEL IN THE

NEW YEAR

A Guid New Year I wish thee, Maggie !
Hae, there's a ripp to thy auld baggie ;
Tho' thou's howe-backit now, and knaggie.,

I've seen the day,
Thou could hae gaen like ony staggie

Out-owre the lay.

Tho' now thou's dowie, stift, and crazy,
An' thy auld hide's as white's a daisy,
I've seen thee dappl't, sleek, and glaizie,

A bonny gray :
He should been tight that daur't to raize thee

Ance in a day.

Thou ance was i' the foremost rank,
A filly buirdly, steeve, an' swank,
An' set weel down a shapely shank

As e'er tread yird ;
An' could hae flown out-owre a stank

Like ony bird.

It's now some nine-an'-twenty year
Sin' thou was my guid father's meere ;
He gied me thee, o' tocher clear,

An' fifty mark :
Tho' it was sma', 'twas weel-won gear,

An' thou was stark.

When first I gaed to woo my Jenny,
Ye then was trottin' wi' your minnie :
Tho' ye was trickie, slee, an' funny,

Ye ne'er was donsie ;
But hamely, tawie, quiet, an' cannie,

An' unco sonsie.

That day ye pranc'd wi' mickle pride,
When ye bure hame my bonnie bride :
An' sweet an' gracefu' she did ride,

Wi' maiden air !
Kyrle-Stewart I could braggea wide,

For sic a pair.

Tho' now ye dow but hoyte an' hobble,
An* wintle like a saumont-coble,
That day ye was a j inker noble,

For heels an' win' !
An' ran them till they a' did wauble,

Far, far behin' !

When thou an' I were young an' skeigh,

An' stable-meals at fairs were dreigh,

How thou wad prance, an' snore and skreigh,

An' tak the road !
Town's bodies ran, an' stood abeigh,

An' ca't thee mad.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 329

When thou was corn't, an' I was mellow,
We took the road aye like a swallow :
At brooses thou had ne'er a fellow,

For pith an' speed ;
But ev'ry tail thou pay't them hollow,

Whare'er thou gaed.

The sma' droop-rumpl't, hunter cattle,
Might aiblins waur't thee for a brattle ;
But sax Scotch miles thou try't their mettle,

An' gar't them whaizle ;
Nae whip nor spur, but just a wattk

O' saugh or hazel.

Thou was a noble fittie-lan",

As e'er in tug or tow was drawn ;

Aft thee an* I, in aught hours gaun,

In guid March weather,
Hae turn'd sax rood beside our han'

For days thegither.

Thou never braindg't an' fetch' t, an' fliskit.
But thy anld tail thou wad ha'e whiskit,
An' spread abreed thy weel-fill'd brisket,

Wi' pith an' pow'r.
Till spritty knows wad rair't an' risket,

An' slypet owre.

When frosts lay lang, an' snaws were deep
An' threaten'd labour back to keep,
I gied thy cog a wee bit heap

Aboon the timmer :
I ken'd my Maggie wadna sleep

For that, or simmer.

In cart or car thou never reestit ;

The steyest brae thou wad hae fac't it ;

Thou never lap, and sten't and breastit,

Then stood to blaw ;
But just thy step a wee thing hastit,

Thou snoov't awa'.

My pleugh is now thy bairn-time a' :
Four gallant brutes as e'er did draw ;
Forbye sax mae I've sell't awa',

That thou hast nurst :
They drew me thretteen pund an' twa,

The vera warst.

Monie a sair daurk we twa ha'e wrought,
An' wi' the weary warl' fought !
An' monie an anxious day I thought

We wad be beat !
Yet here to crazy age we're brought

Wi' something yet.

And think na, my auld trusty servan',
That now perhaps thou's less deservin',
An' thy auld days may end in starvin',

For my last fou,
A heapit stimpart, I'll reserve ane,

Laid by for you.

330 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

We've worn to crazy years thegither ;
We'll toyte about wi' ane anither ;
Wi' tentie care I'll fit thy tether

To some hain'd rig,
Whare ye may nobly rax your leather.

Wi' sma' fatigue.

A PRAYER
IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH

O Thou unknown Almighty Cause

Of all my hope and fear !
In whose dread presence, ere an hour,

Perhaps I must appear !

If I have wander'd in those paths

Of life I ought to shun —
As something, loudly, in my breast,

Remonstrates I have done —

Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me
With passions wild and strong ;

And list'ning to their witching voice
Has often led me wrong.

Where human weakness has come short,

Or frailty stept aside,
Do Thou, All-good ! for such Thou art,

In shades of darkness hide.

Where with intention I have err'd,

No other plea I have,
But Thou art good ; and goodness still

Delighteth to forgive.

JOHN ANDERSON

John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent ;

But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw :

But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.

John Anderson, my jo, John,

We clamb the hill thegither ;
And mony a canty day, John,

We've had wi' ane anither :
Now we maun totter down, John,

Now hand in hand we'll go ;
An' sleep thegither at the foot,

John Anderson, my jo.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 331

ADDRESS TO EDINBURGH

Ediria ! Scotia's darling seat !

All hail thy palaces and tow'rs,
Where once beneath a monarch's feet

Sat Legislation's sovereign pow'rs !
From marking wildly-sea tter'd flow'rs,

As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,
And singing lone, the ling'ring hours,

I shelter' in thy honour'd shade.

Here wealth still swells the golden tide,

As busy Trade his labour plies ;
There Architecture's noble pride

Bids elegance and splendour rise ;
Here Justice, from her native skies,

High wields her balance and her rod ;
There Learning, with his eagle eyes.

Seeks Science in her coy abode.

Thy sons, Edina ! social, kind,

With open arms, the stranger hail ;
Their views enlarg'd, their lib'ral mind,

Above the narrow, rural vale ;
Attentive still to sorrow's wail,

Or modest merit's silent claim ;
And never may their sources fail !

And never envy blot their name !

Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn ;

Gay as the gilded summer sky,
Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn,

Dear as the raptur'd thrill of joy !
Fair Burnet strikes th' adoring eye,

Heav'n's beauties on my fancy shine ;
I see the Sire of Love on high,

And own his work indeed divine !

There, watching high the least alarms,

Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar,
Like some bold vet'ran, gray in arms,

And mark'd with many a seamy scar :
The pond'rous walls and massy bar,

Grim-rising o'er the rugged rock,
Have oft withstood assailing war,

And oft repell'd th' invader's shock.

With awe-struck thought, and pitying tears,

I view that noble, stately dome,
Where Scotia's kings of other years,

Fam'd heroes ! had their royal home ;
Alas ! how changed the times to come !

Their royal name low in the dust !
Their hapless race wild-wand'ring roam,

Tho' rigid law cries out, 'twas just !

Wild beats my heart to trace your steps,
Whose ancestors, in days of yore,

Thro' hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps
Old Scotia's bloody lion bore :

332 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

E'en I who sing in rustic lore,

Haply, my sires have left their shed,

And fac'd grim danger's loudest roar,
Bold -following where your fathers led.

Edina ! Scotia's darling seat !

All hail thy palaces and tow'rs,
Where once beneath a monarch's feet

Sat Legislation's sovereign pow'rs !
From marking wildly-scattered flow'rs,

As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,

I shelter' in thy honour'd shade.

FOR A' THAT AN' A' THAT

Is there, for honest poverty,

That hangs his head, an' a' that ?
The coward slave, we pass him by,

We dare be poor for a' that !
For a' that, an' a' that,

Our toil's obscure, and a' that ;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hoddin grey, an'. a' that ;
Gie fools their silks, an' knaves their wine,

A man's a man for a' that !
For a' that, an' a' that,

Their tinsel show, an' a' that ;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that !

You see yon birkie,1 ca'd a lord,

Wha struts, and stares, an' a' that,
Though hundreds worship at his word,

He's but a coof for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

His riband, star, an' a' that,
The man of independent mind,

He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak' a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that ;
But an honest man aboon his might,

Guid faith, he mauna fa' that ;
For a' that, an' a' that.

Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,

Are higher ranks than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may —

As come it will for a' that —
That sense an' worth, o'er a' the earth,

May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

It's comin' yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that !

Literally, a mettlesome fellow ; here, a proud and affected fellow.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 333

FAIR JEANIE

When first I saw fair Jeanie's face,

I couldna tell what ailed me,
My heart went fluttering pit-a-pat,

My een they almost failed me.
She's aye sae neat, sae trim, sae tight,

All grace does round her hover,
Ae look deprived me o' my heart,

An' I became a lover.

She's aye, aye sae blithe, sae gay,

She's aye so blithe an' cheerie ;
She's aye sae bonnie, blithe, an' gay,

O gin I were her dearie !

Had I Dundas's whole estate,

Or Hopetoun's wealth to shine in ;
Did warlike laurels crown my brow,

Or humbler bays entwining —
I'd lay them a' at Jeanie's feet.

Could I but hope to move her,
An' prouder than a belted knight,

I'd be my Jeanie's lover.

She's aye, aye sae blithe, etc.

But sair I fear some happier swain

Has gained sweet Jeanie's favour :
If so, may every bliss be hers,

Though I maun never have her :
But gang she east, or gang she west,

'Twixt Forth and Tweed all over,
While men have eyes, or ears, or taste,

She'll always find a lover.

She's aye, aye sae blithe, etc.

THE BANKS OF AYR

The gloomy night is gath'ring fast,
Loud roars the wild inconstant blast ;
Yon murky cloud is foul with rain,
I see it driving o'er the plain ;
The hunter now has left the moor,
The scatter'd coveys meet secure ;
While here I wander, prest with care,
Along the lonely banks of Ayr.

The Autumn mourns her rip'ning corn,
By early Winter's ravage torn ;
Across her placid, azure sky,
She sees the scowling tempest fly :
Chill runs my blood to hear it rave —
I think upon the stormy wave,
Where many a danger I must dare,
Far from the bonnie banks of Ayr.

'Tis not the surging billows' roar,
' 'Tis not that fatal dea.dly shore ;
Tho' death in ev'ry shape appear,
The wretched have no more to fear :

334 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

But round my heart the ties are bound,
That heart transpierc'd with many a wound ;
These bleed afresh, those ties I tear,
To leave the bonnie banks of Ayr.

Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales,
Her heathy moors and winding vales ;
The scenes' where wretched fancy roves,
Pursuing past, unhappy loves !
Farewell, my friends ! "farewell, my foes !
My peace with these, my love with those —
The bursting tears my heart declare ;
Farewell the bonnie banks of Ayr !

A BARD'S EPITAPH

[' Here is a sincere and solemn avowal — a confession at once devout,
poetical, and human — a history in the shape of a prophecy.' — WORDS-
WORTH.]

Is there a whim-inspired fool,

Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,

Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool ?

Let him draw near ;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among

That weekly this area throng ?

O, pass not by !
But, with a frater-feeling strong.

Here heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career

Wild as the wave ?
Here pause— and, through the starting tear,

Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn, and wise to know,

And keenly felt the friendly glow,

And softer flame ;
But thoughtless follies laid him low.

And stained his name !

Reader, attend ! Whether thy soul
Soars Fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling" grubs this earthly hole

In low pursuit ;
Know, prudent, cautious self-control

Is wisdom's root.

THE WINTER STORM

The wintry west extends his blast,

And hail and rain does blaw ;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth

The blinding sleet and snaw :
While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,

And roars frae bank to brae ;
And bird and beast in covert rest,

And pass the heartless day.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 335

' The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,'1

The joyless winter day,
Let others fear, to me more dear

Than all the pride of May :
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,

My griefs it seems to join ;
The leafless trees my fancy please,

Their fate resembles mine !

Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme

These woes of mine fulfil ;
Here firm I rest, they must be best,

Because they are Thy will !
Then all I want (oh ! do Thou grant

This one request of mine !)
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny.

Assist me to resign.

AE FOND KISS

[Supposed to relate to his parting with Clarinda. ' These exquisitely
affecting stanzas contain the essence of a thousand love-tales.' — SCOTT.]

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ;
Ae fareweel, alas ! for ever !
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him ?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me ;
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething would resist my Nancy ;
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met — or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest ;
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest !
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure !
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ;
Ae fareweel, alas ! for. ever !
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee !

TO MARY IN HEAVEN

Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray>

That lov'st to greet the early morn,
Again thou usher'st in the day

My Mary from my soul was torn.
Oh Mary ! dear departed shade !

Where is thy place of blissful rest ?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ?

Hear'st thou the- groans that rend his breast ?

1 Dr. Young.

336 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

That sacred hour can I forget ;

Can I forget the hallowed grove,
Where by the winding Ayr we met,

To live one day of parting love !
Eternity will not efface

Those records dear of transports past —
Thy image at our last embrace ;

Ah ! little thought we 'twas our last !

Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbl'd shore,

O'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green ;
The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,

Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene ;
The flow'rs sprang wanton to be prest.

The birds sang love on every spray-
Till soon, too soon, the glowing west

Proclaim' d the speed of winged day.

Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes,

And fondly broods with miser care !
Time but th' impression stronger makes,

As streams their channels deeper wear.
My Mary ! dear departed shade !

Where is thy place of blissful rest ?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ?

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast ?

A VISION

As I stood by yon roofless tower,1

Where the wa'flower scents the dewy air,

Where th' howlet mourns in her ivy bower,
An' tells the midnight moon her care.

The winds were laid, the air was still,
The stars they shot alang the sky ;

The fox was howling on the hill,
An' the distant echoing glens reply.

The stream, adown its hazelly path,

Was rushing by the ruin'd wa's,
Hasting to join the sweeping Nith.

Whose distant roaring swells an' fa's.

The cauld blue north was streaming forth

Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din ;
Athort the lift they start an' shift,

Like fortune's favours, tint as win.

By heedless chance I turn'd mine eyes,
An', by the moonbeam, shook to see

A stern an' stalwart ghaist arise,
Attir'd as minstrels wont to be.

Had I a statue been o' stane,

His darin' look had daunted me ;

An' on his bonnet grav'd was plain,
The sacred posy — ' Libertie !'

1 The ruins of Lincluden Abbey, near Dumfries.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 337

An' frae his harp sic strains did flow,

Might rous'd the slumb'ring dead to hear ;

But oh ! it was a tale of woe.
As ever met a Briton's ear.

He sang wi' joy the former day,

He weeping wail'd his latter times ;
Bat what he said it was nae play —

I winna ventur't in my rhymes.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH

Wee, modest, crimson- tipped flower,
Thou'st met me in an evil hour ;
For I maun crush amang the stoure

Thy slender stem ;
To spare thee now is past my power,

Thou bonnie gem.

Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,

Wi' spreckled breast,
When upward-springing, blithe, to greet

The purpling east !

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth ;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm ;
Scarce rear'd above the parent earth

Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield ;
But thou, beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field,

Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head

In humble guise ;
But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies !

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade !
By love's simplicity betray'd,

And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid

Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd !

Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard.

And whelm him o'er !

22

33§ A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Such fate to suffering worth is giv'n,
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n,
By human pride or cunning driv'n

To misery's brink,
Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n,

He, ruin'd, sink !

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,
That fate is thine — no distant date ;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,

Full on thy bloom,
Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight,

Shall be thy^doom.

IRISH POETS

JONATHAN SWIFT

1667-1745

JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Dublin in the year 1667, on the 3Oth
of November. He was a posthumous child. His father having died
in rather indigent circumstances, the widow and her two children
were maintained for awhile by Godwin Swift, a brother of the
deceased. The family was of English descent, the future poet's
father having been Steward of the King's Inns, and his grand-
father a clergyman of the Church of England. Three years of
Jonathan's childhood were passed at Whitehaven, under the
charge of a nurse, who attended to his education with great care.
Indeed, on being restored to his mother's keeping, it was found
that he had learned to spell with accuracy and to read the Bible
with ease. At the age of six he was sent to school at Kilkenny,
where he remained till, at fifteen, he entered Trinity College,
Dublin. He did not distinguish himself at the University. He
was diligent in the study of history and poetry, but neglected
mathematics and logic almost altogether. At the end of four
years he was ' ploughed ' for his B.A. degree, which he only ob-
tained by special favour after seven years of desultory study.
Referring to this disgrace, Dr. Johnson says : ' It may easily be
supposed he was much ashamed, and shame had its proper place
in producing reformation. He resolved from that time to study
eight hours a day, and continued his industry for seven years,
with what improvement is sufficiently known. This part of his

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 339

story well deserves to be remembered ; it may afford useful
admonition and powerful encouragement to men whose abilities
have been made for a time useless by their passions or pleasures,
and who, having lost one part of life in idleness, are tempted to
throw away the remainder in despair.'

In 1688 Swift went to stay with his mother, who was then
residing at Leicester. He consulted her as to his future course
in life, and she advised him to write to Sir William Temple on
the subject, he being a connection of hers by marriage, living at
Moor Park, in Surrey. Sir William took him into his household
for two years, during which time he did much to improve his
mind, though he did not altogether enjoy the subordinate offices
which he was called upon to perform. He, however, gained the
favour and confidence of his patron, and contributed in no small
measure to the amusement of his leisure hours. King William III.
was in the habit of visiting Sir William from time to time. In
the course of these visits His Majesty made the acquaintance of
Swift, and offered him a captaincy of horse. Swift, however,
respectfully declined this honour, having made up his mind to
take Holy Orders. Sir William employed Swift to prepare and
lay before the King a series of arguments in favour of triennial
Parliaments, which, however, failed to convince the royal mind.
About this time Swift was first attacked by those fits of deafness
and giddiness which eventually led to the loss of his reason. In
1692 he took the degree of M.A. at Oxford, but not with great
distinction, and in 1694 he had a difference of opinion with
Temple which led him to leave that gentleman's establishment.
Temple, however, subsequently offered him the post of Deputy-
Master of the Rolls in Ireland, but this office he declined. He
took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland, and was appointed
Prebendary of Kilroot, in the diocese of Connor. This post,
which he obtained through the influence of Lord Capel, was only
wprth £100 a year. At this time Sir William Temple was
well stricken in years. Dr. Johnson says: 'The infirmities
of the old gentleman made a companion like Swift so necessary
that he invited him back, with a promise to procure him English
preferment, in exchange for the prebend, which he desired him to
resign. With this request Swift complied, having perhaps
equally repented their separation, and they lived together in
mutual satisfaction until Temple's death in 1699.' The old

22 — 2

340 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

baronet left Swift £100 and all his valuable manuscripts. King
William promised him the next vacancy at Canterbury or West-
minster, but failed to fulfil the undertaking, though Sir William's
posthumous works were dedicated to him by Swift as a kind of
reminder of his pledge. In fact, it is pointed out by more than
one of Swift's biographers that the only benefit which he seems to
have derived from his acquaintance with the august monarch was
a lesson in the Dutch method of cutting and eating asparagus.

Tired of waiting for the promised preferment, Swift now accom-
panied the Earl Berkeley, as chaplain and private secretary, on
that nobleman's appointment to the office of Lord- Lieutenant of
Ireland. He was ' tricked ' out of the secretaryship, on the plea
that it was an unsuitable post for a clergyman, but received after-
wards the Rectory of Agher, and the Vicarages of Laracor and
Rathbeggan. He lived at Laracor until 1710, performing the
duties of his office1 in an exemplary manner. Earl Berkeley had
promised him the Deanery of Derry, but this promise was not
destined to be fulfilled. Periodical visits were paid to England,
where he was a great favourite amongst the leading members of
the Whig party, and the friend of Halifax, Addison, Somers, and
other leaders of letters and politics. But he was destined soon
to break with the Whig party and join the Tory ranks. It may
now be mentioned that Swift had undoubtedly spoiled his chance
of high preferment in England by his Tale of a Tub, which, though
one of the works which stamp him as an English classic of the
first rank, incurred so much disfavour that Sharp, Archbishop
of York, warned the Queen against the promotion of its author.
The Duchess of Somerset, too, whom Swift had ' lampooned in a
manner that the meekest of her sex could not forgive,' proved a
powerful enemy.

Kept out of a bishopric by such means, he was at length ap-
pointed, much against his wish, to the Deanery of St. Patrick's,
Dublin, in 1713. He was more useful to the Tories than he had
been to the Whigs, and Harley and Bolingbroke, then at the head
of affairs, were glad to acknowledge the value of his caustic pen.
The following year he published his Public Spirit of the Whigs,
a production ' which evinced so much contempt of the Scottish
nation that the peers of that country went in a body to demand
reparation, and a prosecution was with great difficulty avoided.'
He was hastily recalled the same year from his deanery, to which

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 341

he had repaired to take possession, by the violent dissensions
between Harley and Bolingbroke, whom he tried in vain to
reconcile. The death of the Queen, which soon followed, put an
end to their power and Swift's prospects, and the latter returned
to Dublin, where he ' introduced a meritorious reform into the
chapter of St. Patrick's, over which he obtained an authority
never before possessed in his station.'

' While residing in Temple's house,' says Mr. Shaw, ' he
became acquainted with Esther Johnson, a beautiful young girl
brought up as a dependent in the house, and who, though passing
for the daughter of Sir William's steward, appears really to
have been a natural child of the old diplomatist. To her, while
hardly in her teens, Swift gave instruction ; and the bond between
master and pupil ripened into the deepest and tenderest passion
on the part of the maiden, and as much attachment on that of
the former as the proud and bitter nature of Swift was capable
of feeling. On his removal to Ireland Swift induced Stella — such
was the poetical name he gave her — to settle with her friend
Mrs. Dingley in that country, where he maintained with both of
them — though Mrs. Dingley was a mere mask to save appearances
— that long, curious, and intimate correspondence which has
since been published as his Journal to Stella. . . . During one of
his visits to London Swift became intimate with the family of a
rich merchant named Vanhomrigh, over whose daughter Hester,
to whom he gave the name of Vanessa, he exercised the same kind
of enchantment as he had over Stella.' Mr. Shaw, who gives as
clear and succinct an account as any extant of this romantic but
scarcely creditable state of things, goes on to say that Vanessa
threw herself at Swift's feet and declared her unconquerable love
for him, and even came to Ireland,. where she resided at Celbridge,
and received visits from him. She also wrote to Stella for an
explanation, but Swift intercepted the letter, brought it back to
her, throwing it down ' without a word, but with a terrible
countenance,' before the writer, who died a few weeks afterwards
(in 1723) of a broken heart. Stella died in 1728. Though
Mr. Shaw is of opinion that ' the evidence breaks down upon
examination,' it is only fair to state that Sir Walter Scott, Lord
Macaulay, and other biographers allege that Swift was secretly
married to Stella by Dr. Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, in 1716, and
some go so far as to say that it was the discovery of this fact

342 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

which led to the death of Vanessa. But at best the matter must
still be accounted an unsolved mystery, in spite of a careful
investigation by Mr. Churton Collins.

On the death of George I., the Dean of St. Patrick's paid his
court to the new King and Queen. Some of his most striking
poems were written about this time, including the curious Verses
on his own Death. In 1736 he had a very severe attack of deafness
and giddiness, which caused him to abandon serious work. His
mind began to give way, and a gradual abolition of reason settled
into absolute idiocy in 1742. Though some glimmerings of reason
appeared afterwards at distant intervals, he remained in this
pitiable state until, in October, 1745, he passed painlessly away.
He lies buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and over his
grave is an epitaph which he composed himself. These are some
of his lines on his own death :

Why do we grieve that friends should die ?

No loss more easy to supply.

One year's past : a different scene !

No further mention of the Dean,

Who now, alas ! no more is miss'd,

Than if he never did exist.

Swift, though a great man, is hardly to be accounted a great
poet. Dryden, on reading some of his Pindaric odes, remarked
to him, ' Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.' His works in
verse consist of songs, satires, lampoons, and occasional comic
pieces, all brilliant, fluent, and elegant, abounding in the happiest
characteristics of style. ' All his verses,' says Dr. Johnson,
' exemplify his own definition of a good style — they consist of
"proper words in their proper places." It is pre-eminently as
the author of Gulliver's Travels that Swift takes rank as one of
the greatest writers of English prose. Had that great masterpiece
never appeared, his name would not occupy so prominent a place
as it. now does in the annals of English literature. Still, ' his
poetical works will give him a prominent place among the writers
of his age. They are, however, most strongly contrasted in their
style and manner to the type most prevalent at the time, and of
which Pope is the most complete representative. They have no
pretension to loftiness of language, are written in the sermo
pedestris, in a tone studiously preserving the familiar expression
of common life. In nearly all of them Swift adopted the short
octosyllabic verse that Prior and Gay had rendered popular.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 343

The poems show the same wonderful acquaintance with ordinary
incidents as the prose compositions, the same intense observation
of human nature, and the same profoundly misanthropic view
of mankind.'

The bulk of Swift's fortune was left to a hospital for lunatics,
a provision which he had announced in his lines on his own death :

To show, by one satiric touch,
No nation needed it so much.

The exact amount by which the hospital benefited was £12,000.

Of the many biographies of Swift, Sir Walter Scott's is generally
admitted to be the most lenient in its criticism of his public
character, and the most indulgent towards his faults as a private
individual. Lord Jeffrey, on the other hand, indulged in caustic
strictures and severe censure in No. 53 of the Edinburgh Review,
Sir Walter gives the following interesting description of the Dean's
appearance and character :

' Swift was in person tall, strong, and well made, of a dark com-
plexion, but with blue eyes, black and bushy eyebrows, nose
somewhat aquiline, and features which remarkably expressed
the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind. He was never
known to laugh, and his smiles are happily characterized by the
well-known lines of Shakespeare. Indeed, the whole description
of Cassius might be applied to Swift :

' " He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men.
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything."

' His manners in society were, in his better days, free, lively,
and engaging, not devoid of peculiarities, but bending them so
well to circumstances that his company was universally courted.'
His reputation as a wit is well known. His facility in jest and
repartee was very remarkable. But it is not so generally known
that he was extremely generous, and that he instituted a
benevolent fund with the first ^"500 that he could call his
own. This took the form of a fund for granting small loans
to such industrious artisans and tradesmen as could find security
for the repayment of the money by small weekly instalments,
but insisting upon punctuality in these repayments, without
which the funds must soon have been exhausted.

344 ^

Scott, in his review of Swift's literary merits, has pointed out
that he excelled in three remarkable peculiarities — namely,
originality, indifference to literary fame, and superiority in every
style of composition that he attempted, with the exception of
history. Hazlitt has praised him highly for his wit and humour
in his Lectures on the English Poets. Dr. Johnson, though severe
and somewhat prejudiced, is eulogistic about the purity of his
style :

' In his works he has given very different specimens both of
sentiment and expression. His Tale of a Tub has little resem-
blance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity
of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction, such as
he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is of a mode
so distinct and peculiar that it must be considered by itself ;
what is true of that is not true of anything else that he has written.
. . . He studied purity ; and though perhaps all his strictures
are not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be found ;
and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude
himself safe. . . . His style was well suited to his thoughts,
which are never subtilized by nice disquisitions, decorated by
sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated
by far-sought learning. He pays no court to the passions ; he
excites neither surprise nor admiration ; he always understands
himself, and his readers always understand him.' And yet it'
cannot be forgotten that this great writer sometimes ' neglected
both the decency due to his station as a clergyman and a gentle-
man, and his credit as a man of literature. In poems of a coarse
and indelicate description, his imagination dwelt upon filthy and
disgusting subjects, and his ready talents were employed to em-
body its impurities in humorous and familiar verse.'

When it became known that Swift was dead, the gratitude of
the Irish showed itself, Sir Walter tells us, in the full glow of
national enthusiasm. Young and old of all ranks surrounded the
house. Locks of his hair were so eagerly asked for that Sheridan
has happily quoted the lines of Shakespeare in connection with
the scene :

Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And dying mention it within their -wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 345

A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER

Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower :
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the south, rising with dappled wings,
A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings,
That swill'd more liquor than it could contain,
And, like a drunkard, gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope ;
Such is that, sprinkling, which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop — but not so clean :
You fly, invoke the gods ; then turning, stop
To rail ; she, singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet the dust had shunn'd the unequal strife,
But, aided by the wind, fought still for life,
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust.
Ah ! where must needy poet seek for aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade ?
Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain
Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain !

Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's a-broach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides.
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs
Forget the,ir feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Box'd in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits ;
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds ; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through),
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.

Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go ;
Filths of all hues and odours seem to tell
What street they sailed from by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force,
From Smithfield or St. 'Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge confluence joined at Snowhill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Kolborn Bridge.
Sweepings from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

346 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

A DESCRIPTION OF MORNING IN LONDON

Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach

Appearing show'd the ruddy morn's approach.

The slipshod 'prentice from his master's door

Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.

Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dexterous airs,

Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.

The youth with broomy stumps began to trace

The kennel's edge, where wheels had worn the place.

The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,

Till drown'd in shriller notes of chimney-sweep ;

Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet ;

And brick-dust Moll had scream'd through half the street.

The turnkey now his flock returning sees,

Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees ;

The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,

And school-boys lag with satchels in their hands.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

1728-1774

ALL critics are agreed that Oliver Goldsmith, whether regarded
as a writer of prose or of poetry (and he was equally skilful at
both), was one of the most pleasing authors of the eighteenth
century. Some even go further, and call him one of the greatest,
while Mr. Shaw at least refers to him as the most charming and
versatile of the writers of his time. He was born at the village
of Pallas,1 in the county of Longford, in November, 1728. That
part of the world was then, Lord Macaulay tells us, almost as
remote, for all practical purposes, from the busy and splendid
capital in which his later years were passed as any clearing in
Upper Canada or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even
in the day when Macaulay wrote his biographical sketch of Gold-
smith he could say, 'Those enthusiasts who venture to make
a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet are forced to perform
the latter part of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from
any highroad, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often a
lake. The lanes would break any jaunting-car to pieces, and there
are ruts and sloughs through which the most strongly-built wheels

1 It has been contended that his real birthplace was Smith-Hill House,
Elphin, the residence of his grandfather, the Rev. Oliver Jones, when his
mother was on a visit. This is the opinion of Dr. M. F. Cox, but it is not
generally accepted as correct.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 347

cannot be dragged.' Macaulay, like Thackeray, is perhaps a
little prone to exaggerate when speaking of the Emerald Isle, but
there can be no question that the hamlet was remote from the
busier haunts of men.

Oliver's father was a curate with a very small stipend, and
was obliged to farm some land in order to bring up his rather
large family. While the future poet was still a child, Mr. Gold-
smith was presented to a living worth £200 a year, or thereabouts,
in the county of Westmeath. Upon this change in their fortunes,
the family removed from their isolated dwelling to a more com-
fortable house on a frequented road, not far from the village of
Lissoy. Here he was taught his letters first by a maidservant,
but in his seventh year he was sent to the village school, which
was kept by a man who had been a quartermaster in the time of
Queen Anne. The old man was a marvel in his way, possessing
considerable ability, a great fund of humour, and an inexhaustible
store of amusing anecdotes. His romantic tales are said to have
been in a measure accountable for the roving spirit which de-
veloped itself in his pupil Oliver Goldsmith in after-years. The
poet has portrayed, with unique and unequalled excellence, the
character of this worthy man in The Deserted Village. Ghosts,
fairies, banshees, and many other creatures of the imagination,
figured in the stories which little Oliver heard in the intervals
of more serious and edifying business. From this academy he
was removed, at the age of nine, to a school at Elphin, under
the Rev. Mr. Griffin, thence to Athlone, and thence, again,
to Edgeworthstown, where he was placed under the care of the
Rev. Patrick Hughes, to whose able and careful teaching he after-
wards acknowledged himself to be largely indebted. Wherever
Oliver went he was made a butt of by his playmates. ' His life,'
we are told, ' at this time seems to have been far from happy.
He had, as appears from the admirable portrait of him at Knowle,
features harsh even to ugliness. The small-pox had set its mark
on him with more than usual severity. His stature was small,
and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is
shown to personal defects ; and the ridicule excited by poor
Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and
a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He
became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as
a fright in the playground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-

348 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

room. When he had risen to eminence, those who had once
derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early
years, and recited repartees and couplets which had dropped
from him, and which, though little noticed at the time, were sup-
posed, a quarter of a century later, to indicate the powers which
produced The Vicar of Wakefield and The Deserted Village.'

By the aid of Mr. Contarine, a benevolent uncle, Oliver was
enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, in the seventeenth year
of his age. He entered as a sizar, a position which entitled him
to food and tuition free and lodgings at a nominal charge. In
those days the sizars had to perform some menial offices which
are happily not now demanded of them. They swept the college
courts, carried up the dinner to the Fellows' table, changed the
plates, and poured out the ale.

Goldsmith was foolish enough to neglect almost entirely the
opportunities which residence at the University placed within
his reach. He was low down in the examination lists, idle and
even stupid in the lecture-rooms, and so frivolous that he was
severely flogged by a brutal tutor named Wilder, under whose care
he had been placed as a student. Occasionally he worked well,
and he obtained one of the exhibitions on the foundation of
Erasmus Smith, but he did not obtain his degree of B.A. until
two years after the usual time.

While Oliver was wasting his time at Dublin his father died,
leaving but little money behind him. For a short while after
taking his degree the poet resided with his widowed mother. He
now began to think of a profession. Amongst others, he made
an unsuccessful attempt to obtain Holy Orders, the story of his
having been turned away from the bishop's palace on account of
his glaring red clothing being too familiar to call for more than a
passing reference here. From failure to failure, from squalor to
squalor he went, until we find him at Leyden University, pre-
tending to study medicine. With nothing but a flute in addition
to the clothes he wore, he left that seat of learning, and travelled
on foot through Holland, France, Germany, and as far as Padua,
where he said he obtained a medical degree, though the proof
of this statement is not forthcoming. He supported himself
through Germany and Flanders by means of his performances on
the German flute, which he played fairly well, but the Italians
did not care for his music, and so he was reduced to begging at the

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 349

gates of monasteries and convents. He is said to have told a
' story ' about his having been present at a very interesting con-
versation between Voltaire and Fontenelle, stating that the
interview took place in Paris. But Lord Macaulay assures us
that it is certain Voltaire never was within a hundred leagues of
Paris during the whole time of Goldsmith's wanderings on the
Continent.

The death of his uncle induced him to return to England, and
he reached Dover in 1756, absolutely friendless and entirely
destitute. Mr. Prior,- one of his many biographers, records the
fact that ' a poor chemist at last took compassion on him, and for
a short time the author of The Traveller was too happy to earn
his bread by spreading plasters and pounding in his mortar.'
But soon a change in his fortunes made life smoother for him for
awhile, though not by any means roseate. Dr. Sleigh, an old
college friend, gave him a start in life as a physician and surgeon.
But he did not gain ground, somehow. After unsuccessful
attempts to obtain appointments, first in the East India Com-
pany's Service, and then in a naval hospital, he took lodging
in a wretched garret in Fleet Street, and settled down to work as
a literary drudge, ' writing to order, and at a moment's notice,
schoolbooks, tales for children, prefaces, indexes, and reviews
of books ; and contributing to the Monthly, Critical, and Lady's
Review, the British Magazine, and other periodicals.' In course
of time he became acquainted with Dr. Johnson, Reynolds, and
Burke, and in 1763 he was one of the nine original members of
that confraternity which is still known to fame as ' The Club.'

The well-known saying of Buffon, ' Le style est I'homme,' is
admirably and fully exemplified in the writings of Oliver Gold-
smith. ' A guileless good nature, a kind and tender love for all
his human brotherhood, a gay, unthinking hopefulness shine
clearly out from every page he wrote.'

It is not possible to say with certainty when this illustrious
author first ' appeared in print.' Dr. Collier tells us that it was
from the top room of No. 35, Trinity College, that his first literary
performances emanated. These took the form of street ballads,
which he sold for five shillings each. It is further told that he
used to steal out at nights to hear them sung, and watch the
ready sale which they commanded in the dimly-lighted streets
of the Irish capital. Seldom did the five shillings come home

350 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

intact. Many a time was it shared with a beggar on the
way.

Long after the days of ' the top room of No. 35 ' had passed
away, Goldsmith was writing hard in a garret in Green Arbour
Court, his apartment being reached by the now historic staircase
known as Breakneck Steps. We must pass over his multifarious
prose writings, and come to his poems. In 1764 the beautiful
poem entitled The Traveller made its author suddenly famous.
From the first it created a great impression. Dr. Johnson read
it through with admiration, and said it would not be easy to find
anything to equal it since the death of Pope, and the sister of
Reynolds, the great painter, after hearing the poem read aloud,
declared that she would never again look upon Dr. Goldsmith
as ugly. From this time the poet's career was one of unbroken
literary success. The Deserted Village appeared in 1770 as a
companion poem to The Traveller, written in a like style, and with
the same literary charm and finish. These two poems will
always stand in the front rank of sentimental and descriptive
verse. As long as the world lasts men and women will accord
to sweet Auburn the title which the poet has conferred on it —
that of ' loveliest village of the plain.' Vivid, touching, musical,
natural, picturesque — these are adjectives which may be fairly
applied to either or both of them. They were and are valued,
not merely for their peculiar smoothness and general poetical
charm, but for their morality, their piety, and the elevating prin-
ciples which they uphold with respect to the organization of
society. It is the opinion of some critics that The Deserted
Village is the most finished work which its author produced.
Two years were spent in preparing it for the press. A little
incident which reflects equal credit on author and publisher is
told in connection with its issue. The publisher, appreciating
its superior merits, gave Goldsmith a hundred guineas for the
copyright. The poet returned it, saying, ' It is too much ; it is
more than the honest bookseller can afford, or, indeed, any modern
poetry is worth.' The sale was so large that the bookseller after-
wards insisted on the author accepting the original sum. But
the history of Goldsmith abounds in touching anecdotes like this.

In his declining years the poet suffered from a constitutional
disease, brought on partly by literary labours. Depression of
spirits followed, and eventually an attack of nervous fever brought

351

this brilliant if eccentric life to an end on the 4th of April, 1774,
in his forty-sixth year. At first it was determined to bury him
in Westminster Abbey, but this resolve was abandoned, and he
was laid to rest in the Temple burial-ground. His name is per-
petuated, however, in the Poets' Corner by means of a marble
monument.

From the numerous criticisms on Goldsmith's genius which
are within the reach of any student, we will quote but three short
extracts. ' Goldsmith,' says Hazlitt, ' was one of the most de-
lightful writers in the language. His verse flows like a limpid
stream. His ease is quite unconscious. Everything in him is
spontaneous, unstudied, unaffected, yet elegant, harmonious,
graceful, nearly faultless. Without the point or refinement of
Pope, he has more natural tenderness, a greater suavity of manner,
a more genial spirit. He never rises into sublimity, and seldom
sinks into insipidity, or stumbles upon coarseness.' And just
a word or two from Campbell's masterly criticism. ' Goldsmith's
poetry,' he says, ' enjoys a calm and steady popularity. It
inspires us, indeed, with no admiration of daring design or of
fertile invention, but it presents within its narrow limits a distinct
and unbroken view of poetical delightfulness. . . . His whole
manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection, which gives
back the image of nature unruffled and minutely. . . . His
chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist, and throws a
charm of Claude-like softness over his descriptions of homely
objects that would seem only fit to be the subjects of Dutch
painting. But his quiet enthusiasm leads the affections to humble
things without a vulgar association, and he inspires us with a
fondness to trace the simplest recollections of Auburn, till we
count the furniture of its ale-house, and listen to the " varnished
clock that ticked behind the door."

More recently we have the eulogy of Mr. Austin Dobson :
' His position in letters is undoubtedly high. As an essayist
he ranks with the best ; as a poet, he produced some of the
most enduring works of his generation ; he wrote a novel of
which the reputation is cosmopolitan ; and, of his two plays,
one is not only a masterpiece, but a masterpiece which modern
managers still find a charm to conjure with. Had we known
no more of him than this, we might have invested him with
almost any characteristics and qualities.'

352 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'THE DESERTED VILLAGE'1

Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed :
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene !
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made !
How often have I blest the coming day.
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led xip their sports beneath the spreading tree,
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed ;
And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round.
And still as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired ;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown,
By holding out to tire each other down ;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
• While secret laughter tittered round the place ;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.
These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like these,
With sweet succession, taught ev'n toil to please ;
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,
These were thy charms — but all these charms are fled.

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green :
One only master grasps the whole domain.
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain ;
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choked with sedges, works its weary way ;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mould'ring wall,
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away, thy children leave the land.

Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay :
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made :
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

1 Dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 353

A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man ;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more :
His best companions, innocence and health ;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are altered ; trade's unfeeling train
Usurp the land and dispossess the swain ;
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose !
And every want to luxury allied,
And every pang that folly pays to pride.
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that asked but little room,
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
Lived in each look, and brightened all the green ;
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.

Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour,
Thy glades forlorn confess the tryant's power.
Here, as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangling walks, and ruined grounds ,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

[n all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs — and God has given my share —
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose :
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all T felt, and all I saw ;
And, as an hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return — and die at home at last.

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreats from care, that never must be mine,
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease ;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly !
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep ;
No surly porter stands in guilty state,
To spurn imploring famine from the gate ;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend :
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way ;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past !

23

354 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose ;
There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below ;
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The. sober herd that lowed to meet their young ;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school ;
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ;
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the blooming flush of life is lied.
All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring ;
She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn ;
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled.
And still where many a garden flower grows wild ;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year ;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place ;
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train,
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ;
The long remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away ;
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe ;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side ;
But in his duty prompt at every call.
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all.
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 355

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed,
The reverend champion stood. At his control,
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whispered praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place ; ^

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ;
Even children followed with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest,
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest ;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given.
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.

THE GIFT

To IRIS, IN Bow STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1
, Say, cruel Iris, pretty rake,

Dear mercenary beauty,
What annual offering shall I make,
Expressive of my duty ?

My heart, a victim to thine eyes,

Should I at once deliver,
Say, would the angry fair one prize

The gift, who slights the giver ?

A bill, a jewel, watch, or toy,
My rivals give — and let 'em ;

If gems or gold impart a joy,
I'll give them — when I get 'em.

I'll give — but not the full-blown rose,
Or rose-bud, more in fashion ;

Such short-lived offerings but disclose
A transitory passion.

I'll give thee something yet unpaid,

Not less sincere than civil ;
I'll give thee — ah ! too charming maid,

I'll give thee — to the devil.2

ETRENNE .A IRIS

Pour temoigner de ma flamme,
Iris, du meilleur de mon ame,
Je vous donne a ce nouvel an
Non pas dentelle, ni ruban,
Non pas essence, ni pommade,
Quelques boites de marmelade,
Un manchon, des gants, un

bouquet,

Non pas heures, ni chapelet,
Quoi done ? attendez, je vous

donne
O ! fille plus belle que bonne,

Qui m'avez toujours refuse,

Le point si souvent propose,

Je vous donne — Ah ! le puis-je

dire ?

Oui : c'est trop souffrir le martyre,
II est temps de s'emanciper,
Patience va m'echapper.
Fussiez-vous cent fois plus aim-
able

Belle Iris, je vous donne . . . au
Diable.

1 First printed in The Bee, 1759, p. 50.

2 The original of this poem is in the Menagiana.

23—2

356 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG

Good people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song ;
And if you find it wondrous short,

It cannot hold you long.
«
In Islington there was a man,

Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran, —

Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,

To comfort friends and foes ;
The naked every day he clad, —

When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,

As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound.

And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends ;

But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain his private ends,

Went mad, and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours ran,

And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad,

To every Christian eye ;
And while they swore the dog was mad,

They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied ;

The man recovered of the bite.
The clog it was that died.

STANZAS ON WOMAN

When lovely Woman stools to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can soothe her melancholy.
What art can wash her guilt away ?

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from every eye.

To give repentance to her lover.
And wring his bosom — is, .to die.

GREATER POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 357

A DESCRTPTION OF AN AUTHOR'S BEDCHAMBER

Where the Red Lion, staring o'er the way,

Invites each passing stranger that can pay ;

Where Calvert's butt, and Parson's black champaign,

Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury-lane ;

There in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug,

The Muse found Scroggen stretched beneath a rug ;

A window, patched with paper, lent a ray,

That dimly showed the state in which he lay ;

The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread ;

The humid wall with paltry pictures spread :

The royal game of goose was there in view,

And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew ;

The seasons, framed with listing, found a place,

And brave Prince William showed his lamp-black face :

The morn was cold, he views with keen desire

The rusty grate unconscious of a fire :

With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scored,

And five cracked teacups dressed the chimney-board ;

A night-cap decked his brows instead of bay,

A cap by night — a stocking all the day !

STANZAS ON THE TAKING OF QUEBEC1

Amidst the clamour of exulting joys,

Which triumph forces from the patriot heart,

Grief dares to mingle her soul-piercing voice,

And quells the raptures which from pleasures start.

O WTolf e ! , to thee a streaming flood of woe,
Sighing we pay, and think e'en conquest dear ;

Quebec in vain shall teach our breast to glow,

Whilst thy sad fate extorts the heart-wrung tear.

Alive, the foe thy dreadful vigour fled,

And saw thee fall with joy-pronouncing eyes :

Yet they shall know thou conquerest, though dead 1
Since from thy tomb a thousand heroes rise.

1 First printed in the Busy Body for October 22, 1759.

35$ A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'THE TRAVELLER; OR, A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY1

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.
Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po ;
Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door ;
Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
A weary waste expanding to the skies ;
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee :
Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend,
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend ;
Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire ;
Blest that abode, where want and pain repair,
And every stranger finds a ready chair :
Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,
Where all the ruddy family around
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale ;
Or press the bashful stranger to his food,
And learn the luxury of doing good.

But me, not destined such delights to share.
My prime of life in wandering spent and care :
Impelled with Steps unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view ;
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet. as I follow, flies ;
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone.
And find no spot of all the world my own.

Ev'n now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend ;
And, placed on high above the storm's career,
Look downward where an hundred realms appear ;
Lakes, forests, cities, plains, extending wide,
The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 359

MINOR POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS

Elijah Fenton (1683-1730) was a ' respectable contemporary
poet ' of Alexander Pope. In conjunction with William Broome,
he assisted the greater poet in his great translation of the Iliad
and Odyssey. But he was the author of some poetical works
which have gained for him an independent reputation in the annals
of literature. A volume of poems from his pen appeared in
1717, and in 1723 he published a tragedy which brought him in
£1,500. This work is entitled Mariamne. He also wrote a
Pindaric ode, which he dedicated to Lord Gower, and which was
much admired by Pope. Fenton edited and annotated the
works of Waller in 1729. He was a B.A. of Jesus College, Cam-
bridge.

The Rev. William Broome (1689-1745) was born at Haslington,
in the county of Chester. He was educated at Jesus College,
Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in the year 1716. He took
Holy Orders, and eventually became Rector of Pulham, in
Norfolk. He published a volume of poems in 1739. He helped
Pope in his Homeric translations, and his work as a translator
is superior to his efforts as an original poet.

The Rev. James Bramston (1694-1744), a contributor to
Dodsley's Collection, was educated at Westminster School and
at Christ Church, Oxford, of which college he was admitted a
student in 1713. He took Holy Orders, and became Vicar of
Harting, Sussex, in 1725. His chief works are The Art of Politics,
published in 1729, and The Man of Taste, published in 1731.

360 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The former is an imitation of The Art of Poetry, by Horace. The
Man of Taste was, he tells us, occasioned by Pope's epistle on
that subject. Bramston was also the author of an imitation of
The Splendid Shilling (by Philips), entitled The Crooked Sixpence.
The following lines are from The Man of Taste :

Swift's whims and jokes for my resentment call,
For he displeases me that pleases all.
Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.

*****

Rhyme binds and beautifies the poet's lays,
As London ladies owe their shape to stays.

Henry Carey (died in 1743) is now chiefly remembered as the
author of one of the most popular ballads in the English language.
Few songs of its kind have been sung so frequently at concerts
of every sort and size as that entitled Sally in our Alley. It is a
classical lyric, and it is worthy of note that the music is also by
Carey. He gives the following account of the origin of the
ballad, and the incidents which led to its composition : ' A shoe-
maker's apprentice making holiday with his sweetheart, treated
her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying chairs,
and all the elegancies of Moorfields : from whence, proceeding to
the Farthing Piehouse, he gave her a collation of buns, cheese-
cakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled ale ; through
all which scenes the author dodged them (charmed with the
simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this little
sketch of nature.' Addison is said to have admired the song.

Carey was also the author of other songs, and of several
dramatic pieces, two of which were Chrononhotonthologos and
The Dragon of Wantley. The former was issued in 1734, and
the latter in 1737. These were very favourably received.

Matthew Green (1696-1737) was a clerk in the Custom House,
and originally a Dissenter. He changed his faith, however, on
account of the narrowness and austerity of his parents. He was
subject to constantly recurring fits of depression, a malady which
undoubtedly led him to compose his poem entitled The Spleen,
which was greatly admired in his day, and was honoured by the
praises of Pope and Gray. It was first published by Richard

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 361

Glover, the author of Leonidas. We quote some lines of the
poem which, though now hardly remembered, is a melodious and
powerful one :

To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen,
Some recommend the bowling-green ;
Some hilly walks ; all exercise ;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies ;
Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen ;
And kitten, if the humour hit,
Has harlequined away the fit.

Isaac Hawkins Browne (1706-1760) was for awhile Member of
Parliament for the division of Wenlock, in Shropshire. He was
the author of a Latin poem, De Animi Immortalitate, and an
English poem entitled Design and Beauty. The former is written
in the style of Lucretius. But he is chiefly celebrated for a work
entitled A Pipe of Tobacco, which contains six imitations of
authors who were living at the time at which it was published.
It is a remarkably clever book, and quite unique in its way. The
writers parodied are Colley Gibber ; James Thomson, author of
The Seasons ; Young, author of Night Thoughts ; Pope, Swift,
and Ambrose Philips. What Mr. Chambers calls ' Ambrose
Philips's namby-pamby ' is thus parodied :

Little tube of mighty power
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax and eye of fire ;
And thy snowy taper waist
With my finger gently braced
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With my little stopper pressed,
And the sweetest bliss of blisses
Breathing from thy balmy kisses.

Colley Gibber (1671-1757) was a- dramatic writer, who was Poet
Laureate from 1730 until the time of his death in 1757. One of
his plays, The Careless Husband, is ' still deservedly a favourite.'

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709-1759) enjoyed great popu-
larity as a courtier, poet, and satirist during the reign of George II.
His father's name was Hanbury, but Charles changed his name
to Williams on inheriting some property in Monmouthshire left
to him by his godfather. He was a Member of Parliament for
some time, and subsequently an Ambassador at the Russian and
Prussian Courts. Nearly all his poems were written on people and

362 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

subjects connected with the age in which he wrote, and for that
reason they have lost their interest. They were badly edited in
1822, when ' many gross pieces not written by the satirical poet
were admitted.'

William Somerville (1677-1742) had a large estate in Warwick-
shire which brought in an income of £1,500 a year. In writing to
Allan Ramsay, he describes himself as :

A squire well-born, and six foot high.

The estate was burdened with an encumbrance in the shape of an
allowance of £600 a year to the poet's mother, and the remainder
does not seem to have been sufficient for the open-handed squire,
who died in somewhat straitened circumstances. He is chiefly
remembered for his poem The Chase, which was published in 1735-
It is written in blank verse, and is a kind of poetical handbook
for votaries of the chase. It contains many fine passages, such as :

Hail, gentle Dawn ! mild, blushing goddess, hail !
Rejoiced I see thy purple mantle spread
O'er half the skies ; gems pave thy radiant way,
And orient pearls from every shrub depend.

Dr. Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was an Independent minister
whose hymns are too well known to need any special mention.
Their author was born in Southampton, and was educated at a
school taught by the Rev. Thomas Rowe, a Dissenting minister.-
The poet afterwards spent four years in the household of Sir
John Hartopp. The last thirty-six years of his life were passed
under the sheltering roof of Sir Thomas Abney, Lady Abney con-
tinuing the hospitality after her husband's death. The writings
of Watts include some prose works, one on Logic and another on
The Improvement of the Mind. The University of Edinburgh
conferred on him in 1728 the honorary degree of Doctor of
Divinity, a distinction which met with the approval of Dr. John-
son, who remarked that academical honours would have more
value if they were always bestowed with equal judgment. Be-
sides the works already mentioned, Dr. Watts wrote, in 1726, a
treatise on Astronomy and Geography. It has been well said that
his is ' a name never to be pronounced without reverence by any
lover of pure Christianity, or by any well-wisher of mankind.'

William Shenstone (1714-1763), though now almost entirely
forgotten, was once a popular poet. His chief work was a beau-

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 363

tiful poem entitled The Schoolmistress, written in the Spenserian
stanza, in which he immortalized the mistress of the dame-school
at which he received his early training. Many passages in the
poem are worthy of the pen of Goldsmith. ' He is still more
remarkable,' says Mr. Shaw, ' as having been one of the first to
cultivate that picturesque mode of laying out gardens, and de-
veloping by well-concealed art the natural beauties of scenery,
which, under the name of the English style, has supplanted the
majestic but formal manner of Italy, France, and Holland.'
The Schoolmistress was published in 1742, but is said to have been
written when the poet was at college, his alma-mater being
Pembroke College, Oxford. He is the author of A Pastoral
Ballad, which is the finest specimen of its kind in the English
language. It was published in 1743.

FROM 'THE SCHOOLMISTRESS'

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
Emblem right meet of decency does yield :

Her apron died in grain, as blue, I trow,
As is the harebell that adorns the field ;

And in her hand, for sceptre, she does wield

Tway birchen sprays ; with anxious fear entwined,

With dark distrust, and sad repentance filled ;
And steadfast hate, and sharp affliction joined,
And fury uncontrolled, and chastisement unkind.

FROM 'A PASTORAL BALLAD'

Ye shepherds, so cheerful and gay,

Whose flocks never carelessly roam ;
Should Corydon's happen to stray,

Oh ! call'the poor wanderers home.
Allow me to muse and to sigh,

Nor talk of the change that ye find ;
None once was so watchful as I ;

I have left my dear Phyllis behind.

Very Rev. William Thomson (died in 1766) was a close imitator
of Spenser, and marred his work by the needless use of archaic
words and phrases. He published two volumes of poems,
among which those entitled The Nativity, Sickness, and The
Hymn to May were once very well esteemed by critics. He
graduated M.A. at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1738. He
became a Fellow of the same college, took Holy Orders, and
died as Dean of Raphoe, in Ireland.

364 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Dr. Mark Akenside (1721-1770), a physician of high standing,
was, to quote the words of Pope, ' no everyday writer.' He was
the son of a butcher at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He took the degree
of M.D. at Leyden University in 1744. His chief poem is entitled
The Pleasures of the Imagination. It is a learned disquisition on
the effect of beautiful objects on the mind of man, and is written
in graceful and flowing blank verse. The poem was written in
early manhood, and was not equalled by any subsequent work
of its author. The following is a typical passage :

TASTE

What, then, is taste, but these internal powers
Active and strong, and feelingly alive
To each fine impulse ? a discerning sense
Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust
From things deformed or disarranged, or gross
In species ? This, nor gems nor stores of gold
Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow ;
But God alone, when first His active hand
Imprints the secret bias of the soul.

John Byrom (1691-1763) was born at Manchester. He was
among the unfortunates whose birth took place on a 2gth of
February, and who consequently had only one birthday in every
four years. He is now best remembered as the author of
Christians, Awake ! the popular Christmas hymn, which was
composed in 1745. The familiar melody, ' Mortram,' to which the
words are usually sung, was by John Wainwright, an eminent
organist. The original manuscript of the hymn is in the archives
of Cheetham's Hospital, Manchester, and was written by the poet
for his daughter Dolly. It is headed Christmas Day for Dolly.
He was the inventor of a system of shorthand, for which he
received a grant from Parliament. He is also the author of a
poem which appeared in the Spectator of the 6th of October, 1714,
entitled A Pastoral, and beginning, My time, 0 ye Muses, was
happily spent. Byrom was a B.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge,
and studied medicine at Montpelier, in France.

The Rev. Richard Gifford (1725-1807) was Vicar of Dufneld in
Derbyshire, Rector of North Ockendon, in Essex, and Chaplain
to the Marquess of Tweedale. He was the author of a striking
poem on Contemplation, which was well spoken of by Dr. Johnson,
who quotes a stanza of it in his Dictionary as furnishing an illus-

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 365

tration of the meaning of the word vicissitude. Johnson has
slightly altered the verse, which in the original runs as follows :

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound,
She feels no biting pang the while she sings ;
Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.

Robert Lloyd (1733-1764) was born in London, his father being
an assistant-master at Westminster School. He was educated at
Cambridge, and was appointed an usher at the school before-
mentioned, but he did not like teaching, and abandoned it for a
literary career. He published a number of poems, chiefly of a
fugitive kind, and became editor of the St. James's Magazine.
His best poem was entitled The Actor, and is said to have been the
precursor of The Rosciad of Churchill. Lloyd, in conjunction
with Colman, parodied the odes of Gray. He seems to have been
something of a pessimist, and wrote of the miseries of a poet's
life and the wretchedness of a school-usher.

Charles Churchill (1731-1764) was educated at Westminster
School and at Cambridge. He took Holy Orders, but sub-
sequently, after a display of careless habits and neglect of clerical
proprieties, retired from the Church. He was the author of a
poem entitled The Rosciad, which appeared in 1761, and won such
golden opinions that critics hailed its author as a second Dryden,
but posterity has, not endorsed their judgment. The best of his
satires is entitled The Prophecy of Famine, which is a tirade
against the Scotch, written in 1762. He also wrote a poem called
Night. All his poems were highly thought of in his day, but they
have lost their interest, and have been stigmatized by Mr. Collier
as ' biting and fluid poetry of an inferior order.' The poet lived
a dissipated life, but perhaps one of his finest passages is on
Remorse.

Bishop Thomas Percy (1729-1811) was a native of Shropshire,
who became Dean of Carlisle, and afterwards Bishop of Dromore,
in Ireland. ' The friend of Johnson, and one of the most accom-
plished members of that circle in which Johnson was supreme,
Percy was strongly impressed with the vast stores of the beautiful
though rude poetry which lay buried in obscure collections of
ballads and legendary compositions, and he devoted himself to

366 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

the task of explaining and popularizing the then neglected
beauties of those old rhapsodists with the ardour of an antiquary
and with the taste of a true poet.' No words could better express
the extent and nature of the debt which English literature owes
to the labours of Percy. In 1765 he published a great collection
of such works under the title Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
The book contained no less than one hundred and seventy-six
pieces, forty-five of which were printed from the folio manuscript.
It would be difficult to say how far-reaching was the influence
exerted by this revival on contemporary and subsequent verse.
But it is well known to have given colour to the early writings of
Sir Walter Scott, and also to have wrought an influence upon the
verse of Coleridge and Wordsworth. The book itself should be
in the possession of every student, were it only for a careful perusal
of the Essay on the Ancient Minstrels with which it is prefaced.
Bishop Percy was also the author of some original poems which
are too well known to need more than a mention of their names,
as The Friar of Orders Gray, and 0 Nancy, wilt Thou go with Me ?
How great a debt we owe to Percy may be judged from the fact
that Mr. Shaw thinks it possible that but for Percy's Reliques
we might never have had either The Lady of the Lake or Waverley.

FROM 'NANCY'

O Nancy, when thou'rt far away.

Wilt thou not cast a wish behind ?
Say, canst thou face the parching ray,

Nor shrink before the: wintry wind ?
O can that soft and gentle mien

Extremes of hardship learn to bear,
Nor, sad, regret each courtly scene,

Where thou wert fairest of the fair ?

Mrs. Thrale (1739-1821), otherwise Mrs. Piozzi, as she sub-
sequently became, was the wife of an opulent brewer who showed
great hospitality to Dr. Johnson. She wrote a number of works
of no very great merit, but her poem entitled The Three Warnings
is so well written that it has been thought the learned doctor
had a hand in its composition.

Richard Glover (1712-1785) was a merchant in London and a
Member of Parliament for Weymouth. He was the author of a
poem entitled Leonidas, which was very popular in his day, but
is now little thought of. He also wrote a sequel to it, which he

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 367

called Athenais. The former was published when he was twenty-
five years of age (in 1737), but the latter was not published until
1787, two years after the poet's death.

William Mason (1728-1797), an intimate friend of the poet
Gray, was born in Yorkshire. His friendship with Gray began at
Cambridge, where the two were fellow-students. Mason was the
author of a number of odes and dramatic pieces, but his best
work is a poem entitled The English Garden, a composition in
blank verse, divided into four books. He published an edition
of Gray's poems with a memoir.

The Rev. Francis Fawkes (1721-1777) was Vicar of Hayes in
Kent. He translated the odes of Anacreon (Johnson said very
finely), and wrote some very creditable original verses. ' How-
ever classic in his tastes and studies, he seems to have relished a
cup of English ale.'

John Armstrong (1709-1779) studied medicine in Edinburgh,
and graduated M.D. in 1732. He was the author of a poem of
a didactic tendency, entitled The Art of Preserving Health, which
was praised by Warton for its classical correctness and poetical
imagery.

Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was a lawyer who event-
ually became a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He was
given to poetic exercises, but took leave of the pastime in a grace-
ful poem contributed to Dodsley's Miscellany, and entitled The
Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse.

Dr. James Grainger (1721-1766) studied medicine in Edinburgh,
and, having served for awhile in the army, settled down in a
London practice. Eventually he went to the West Indies,
where he married a lady of fortune. His poetical works include
Solitude, which was published in 1755, and was praised by
Johnson. He also wrote The Sugar-cane, in 1764, and a trans-
lation of Tibullus.

The Rev. James Merrick (1720-1769) was educated at Oxford,
where he acted as tutor to Lord North. He wrote some hymns
and an amusing poem, or fable in verse, entitled The Chameleon.

368 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The Rev. Dr. John, Langhorne (1735-1779) was born in Westmor-
land. He was a miscellaneous writer, and amongst his works
may be mentioned a poem of some merit entitled Country Justice.
He became a prebendary of Wells Cathedral, and was greatly
admired as a preacher.

John Scott (1739-1783) was the son of a draper in London who
eventually retired to Amwell, in Hertfordshire, where the future
poet passed his life. In 1776 he published a poem entitled
Amwell t which is his best work.

William Whitehead (1715-1785) became Poet-Laureate on the
death of Colley Gibber, Gray having declined the honour of the
appointment. He was the author of seven dramas. He was
educated at Winchester School, and obtained a scholarship at
Cambridge. Amongst his works are two plays, entitled respec-
tively The Roman Father and Creusa. ' An easy and playful '
poem on Variety may be mentioned as containing some graceful
passages.

The Rev. Samuel Bishop (1731-1795) was Head-master of
Merchant Taylors' School. He wrote a number of essays and
poems. The best of the latter are in praise of his wife.

Christopher Smart (1722-1770) was a Fellow of Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge. His best poem is entitled A Song to David, which
is a religious poem of great originality and beauty. He wrote a
satire on Sir John Hill which he called the Hilliad. He went
mad eventually, was confined in a madhouse, and is said to have
indented some of his best work on the wall of his cell with a key.

The Rev. Thomas Warton (1728-1790) was the author of a very
exhaustive and valuable History of English Poetry, which, how-
ever, only extends as far as the beginning of the Elizabethan era,
which he speaks of as ' the most poetical age of our annals.'
He adopts the chronological method of arranging his work, ' as
giving freer exertion for research, and as enabling him to ex-
hibit, without transposition, the gradual improvement in our
poetry, and the progression of our language.' Thomas Warton
was appointed Poet- Laureate on the death of Whitehead in 1785.
His chief poem is entitled The Pleasures of Melancholy, and was
written at the age of nineteen. He became a Fellow of Trinity
College, Oxford, and Professor of Poetry at his University.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 369

The Rev. Dr. Joseph Warton (1722-1800) was educated at Win-
chester School, of which he eventually became head-master,
besides obtaining prebends of St. Paul's and Winchester. He
wrote some poetical works, including an Ode to Fancy, which
evinces considerable power. He was a member of Johnson's
literary club, and edited an edition of Pope's works in 1797.
Thomas and Joseph Warton were sons of Dr. Warton. of Magdalen
College, Oxford, who was twice appointed to the Professorship
of Poetry at the University, and was himself the author of some
meritorious verse.

Christopher Anstey (1724-1805) was the author of a poetical
work which bore the strange and somewhat misleading title of
The New Bath Guide. ' It stole into the world,' wrote Horace
Walpole, ' and for a fortnight no soul looked into it, concluding
its name was its true name. No such thing. It is a set of letters
in verse, in all kinds of verse, describing the life at Bath, and
incidentally everything else ; but so much wit, so much humour,
fun, and poetry, so much originality, never met together before.'
Five years afterwards Smollett, in Humphrey Clinker, may be
said to have ' reduced it to prose/ It is full of wit like this :

Oh ! had I a voice that was stronger than steel
With twice fifty tongues to express what I feel,
And as many good mouths, I never could utter
All the speeches my lord made to Lady Bunbutter.

The Rev. Richard Jago (1715-1781), Vicar of Snitterfield,
published a poem called Edgehill in 1767, and Labour and Genius ;
or, The Millstream and the Cascade, a Fable, in 1768. He was
also the author of other poems.

The Rev. T. Moss (died in 1808) published a small collection of
miscellaneous poems in 1769. He was Minister of Brierley Hill
and of Trentham, in Staffordshire.

William Gifford (1756-1826) was born at Ashburton, in
Devonshire. He was celebrated as a poet, translator, and
critic, and was the first editor of the Quarterly Review. He was
in a great measure self-educated. He translated Juvenal in
1802, and published ' two of the most bitter, powerful, and resist-
less literary satires which modern days have produced.' These
are the Baviad (1794) and Mceviad (1795). His work as an editor
was very extensive and varied.

24

370 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819), who wrote under the name of
' Peter Pindar,' was ' a coarse and lively satirist,' and was born at
Dodbrooke, in Devonshire. He directed some of his strongest
satires at the tempting weaknesses of King George III. One of
his most amusing attacks is levelled at Boswell, and is entitled
Bozzy and Piozzi ; or, The British Biographers. His works, on
the whole, afford very entertaining reading, but, taken as poetry,
they are not of a high order of merit.

The Rev. William Crowe (circa 1746-1829) was educated at New
College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow in 1773. He was
appointed Professor of Poetry and Public Orator, and also became
Rector of Alton Barnes. He wrote a poem called Lewesdon Hill,
in blank verse, and other poetical pieces, all of which are well
executed.

Mrs. Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) was a versatile writer, being
celebrated as a novelist besides being a writer of excellent verse.

Miss Susanna Blamire (1747-1794), though born in Cumber-
land, is chiefly distinguished for ' the excellence of her Scottish
poetry, which has all the idiomatic ease and grace of a native
minstrel.' Her Poems were published in 1842.

The Rev. Christopher Pitt (1699-1748) was a poet-translator^
who published in 1725 Vida's Art of Poetry, translated into English
Verse. He also translated the whole of the Mneid, and imitated
some of the epistles and satires of Horace. Johnson spoke well
of him, but his work is now but little read.

James Hammond (1710-1742) was a nephew of Sir Robert
Walpole. He ' bestowed his affections on a Miss Dashwood,
whose agreeable qualities and inexorable rejection of his suit
inspired the poetry by which his name has been handed down
to us. His verses are imitations of Tibullus — smooth, tame, and
frigid.'

Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823) was a very popular poet in his
day. He was the son of a tailor at Honington, but though he
began life on his own account as a shoemaker, he was fortunate
enough to attract the attention of the Duke of Grafton, who
obtained an appointment for him in the Seal Office. His prin-

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 371

cipal poetical works are The Farmer's Boy (1798), Rural Tales
(1810), Wild Flowers, The Banks of Wye, and Mayday with the
Muses. His versification is excellent, with a uniformity of merit
throughout.

William Blake (1757-1827) was born in London. He was the
son of a hosier, and was apprenticed to an engraver. He was of
an artistic and poetical temperament from the first, and made
the best use of his leisure moments by drawing pictures and
writing verses. At the age of twenty he had written a number
of songs and ballads, as well as a dramatic poem. These were
printed by Flaxman and a gentleman named Matthews. Songs
of Innocence appeared in 1789, with illustrations etched on copper
by the poet and his wife. He was ' an artist-poet of rare but wild
and wayward genius.' One of his poems, on the Tiger, was
spoken of by Charles Lamb as ' glorious.' The first verse is the

best :

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry ?

Mrs. Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) was ' a learned and pious
lady, familiar to the readers of Boswell's/o/msow.' She published
a small volume of poems, which were composed before she was
twenty years old. The best of her poems is an Ode to Wisdom.
Johnson commemorated her talents in two epigrams, one in
Greek and the other in Latin. The Latin epigram is as follows :

Elysios Popi dum ludit laeta per hostos,
En avida lauros carpit Eliza manu,
Nil opus est furto. Lauros tibi, dulcis Eliza,
Si neget optatas Popus, Apollo dabit.

Mrs. Carter's Ode to Wisdom was inserted by Richardson in
Clarissa Harlowe.

Thomas Tickell (1686-1740), a friend of Joseph Addison, was
a contributor to the Spectator. He was the author of a pathetic
ballad entitled Colin and Lucy, and another poem called Kensing-
ton Gardens, as well as a number of papers in the Spectator and
Guardian. He wrote an elegy on the death of Addison which has
been much admired. Tickell went to Ireland in 1724 as Secre-
tary to the Lords Justices. He died at Bath in 1740. He was

24 — 2

372 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

educated at Queen's College, Oxford. There are magnificent
lines in the elegy on Addison, such as :

Can I forget the dismal night that gave
My soul's best part for ever to the grave ?
*****

While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend,
Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend.

* * * * *

Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone,
Sad luxury ! to vulgar minds unknown.
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallowed mould below ;
Proud names, who once the reins of empire held ;
In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled.

Tickell is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, in Dublin. It is re-
corded on his tomb that ' his highest honour was that of having
been the friend of Addison.'

Ambrose Philips (1671-1749) was educated at St. John's College,
Cambridge. He was a friend of Addison and Steele, but was
called ' Namby Pamby ' by Pope and his followers. He contributed
some Pastorals to Tonson's Miscellany in 1709, and some poems of
the same description by Pope were in the same number. The
work of Tickell is not by any means perfect, but he wrote an
Epistle to the Earl of Dorset which Goldsmith speaks of as ' in-
comparably fine.' Its style is not unlike Goldsmith's own.
Lines like these are satisfying :

In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns shew,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow,
The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield.
Seemed polished lances in a hostile field.

Richard Savage (1697-1743) was the unfortunate friend of
Johnson whose miserable history is familiar to all readers of the
learned doctor's biographies. He was the illegitimate son oi
Richard Savage, Earl Rivers, and the Countess of Macclesfield.
He led a dissipated life, and sank lower and lower until, in 1743,
he was found dead in bed in Bristol Gaol, where he was detained
'as a debtor. His chief poetical works are The Wanderer, written
at Lord Tyrconnel's house in 1729, and a poem entitled The
Bastard.

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) was educated at Harrow and at
University College, Oxford. He was a miscellaneous writer,
amongst his works being two small volumes of poems. But his
work consists chiefly of translations from Eastern writers. He

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 373

became a Judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, and was cele-
brated as an Oriental scholar. He translated a dramatic poem
from the Sanskrit.

Nathaniel Cotton (1707-1788) was a physician at St. Albans
who numbered Cowper amongst his patients. He was the author
of Miscellaneous Poems. He also wrote Visions in Verse for
children.

William Hayley (1745-1820) was educated at Trinity Hall,
Cambridge. He was, a friend of Cowper, whose biography he
wrote. He was the author of The Triumphs of Temper, a poem
in six cantos, which appeared in 1781, an Essay on Epic Poetry
(1782), and a number of other works in prose and verse. His
poetry is of a high order of merit. In the Essay on Epic Poetry
are some lines written as a Tribute to his Mother, on her Death,
which ' had the merit of delighting Gibbon, and with which
Southey has remarked Cowper would sympathize deeply.' It
contains many fine lines, such as these :

Nor will the public with harsh rigour blame
This my just homage to thy honoured name ;
To please the public, if to please be mine,
Thy virtues trained me — let the praise be thine.

Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was educated at St. John's
College, Cambridge, and took the degree of M.B. at Edinburgh
in 1755. He published a beautiful poem in 1781, entitled The
Botanic Garden, and, a continuation of it in 1789, entitled Loves
of the Plants. He has been called ' The Poet-Laureate of Botany.'
His popularity as a poet has not been well sustained.

David Garrick (1716-1779) is best remembered as the greatest
of all English actors, eminent in tragedy and comedy alike, but
he was also the author of some dramatic pieces. His chief plays
are The Lying Valet and Miss in her Teens. He also ' wrote some
epigrams, and even ventured on an ode or two.'

Miss Anna Seward (1747-1809) was the daughter of a Canon
of Lichfield, who was himself a poet and one of the editors of
Beaumont and Fletcher. She wrote some elegies, including one
on the Death of Captain Cook, and A Monody on the Death of
Major Andre.

Mrs. Anne Hunter (1742-1821) published a collection of poems
in 1806. Haydn set some of her songs to music.

374 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

George Colman, the Younger (1762-1836), best known as a
dramatist, wrote some poems which attained to a certain degree
of popularity — e.g., The Newcastle Apothecary and Lodgings for
Single Gentlemen.

Thomas Yalden (1671-1736) was born in Exeter, and became a
scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently a Fellow.
Johnson says his poems ' deserve perusal/ the best being a Hymn
to Darkness.

Dr. Gilbert West (1700 ? -1756) was the author of several poems,
including one On the Abuse of Travelling, a canto in imitation of
Spenser, which is praised by Gray. He also translated the odes
of Pindar. The University of Oxford conferred on him the
honorary degree of LL.D.

George Lillo (1693-1739) was a dramatic poet of considerable
power. He wrote George Barnwell, Fatal Curiosity, Arden of
Fever sham, and A Yorkshire Tragedy. In style and manner
' he is real, but with the reality, not of Walter Scott, but of
Defoe.'

Robert Dodsley (1709-1764) was a publisher and a patron of
literature. In 1758 he issued a Collection of Poems by Several
Hands. He also wrote some original poems and dramatic pieces.
His shop was in Pall Mall, and Pope lent him £100, to enable
him to commence business. He wrote seven dramatic pieces,
including The Toyshop, Rex et Pontifex, and Cleone.

David Mallet (circa 1700-1765) was ' a successful but unprin-
cipled literary adventurer,' and is now chiefly remembered for
his Ballads. Of these the best is entitled William and Margaret.

Lord Lyttelton (1709-1773) is honoured with a place amongst
the poets by Dr. Johnson, but his poems are not very striking.
He was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and raised to the Peerage.

James Cawthorne (1720-1761) was born at or near Sheffield, and
was educated partly at Rotherham and partly at Kirkby Lons-
dale. His first employment was that of an usher in a school
kept by a Mr. Clare in London. In 1743 he was appointed
Master of Tunbridge School. In 1746 he published a poem
entitled Abelard to Eloisa.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 375

Soame Jenyns (1705-1787) was the only son of Sir Roger
Jenyns, and was born at Bottesham, in Cambridge. He was
educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, but left without taking
a degree. He showed a talent for poetical composition early in
life, publishing The Art of Dancing in 1729, an Epistle to Lord
Lovelace in 1735, and a volume of poems in 1752. He is men-
tioned by Dr. Johnson.

Paul Whitehead (1710-1774) is mentioned by Dr. Johnson in
his Lives of the Poets. ' His first performance was the State
Dunces, inscribed to Mr. Pope, in 1733 ; and in 1738 he published
Manners, a satire. Other works of his include The Gymnasiad,
published in 1744, and Honour, a satire, which appeared in 1747.

\

SCOTTISH POETS

Robert Fergusson (1751-1774) was born in Edinburgh, and
educated at St. Andrews University. He has been called the
' poetical progenitor ' of Robert Burns, ' the poet of Scottish city
life,' and ' the Laureate of Edinburgh.' All these titles he richly
deserved. But, unfortunately, he lived a life of gaiety and dis-
sipation, which "brought him to an early grave. Fergusson began
his poetical career by contributing pieces to Ruddiman's Weekly
Magazine, and in 1773 he published his poems in one volume.
Amongst the best of his works may be mentioned The King's
Birthday, Braid Claith, and an Address to the Iron Kirk Bell. He
is accounted the best of the Scottish vernacular poets of his time.
The following lines, from a quaint description of a Sunday in
Edinburgh, will give a fair idea of this poet's style :

On Sunday, here, an altered scene
O' men and manners meets our een.
Ane wad maist trow, some people chose
To change their faces wi' their clo'es,
And fain wad gar ilk neibour think
They thirst for guidness as for drink ;
But there's an unco dearth o' grace,
That has nae mansion but the face,
And never can obtain a part
In benmost corner o' the heart.

John Wilson (1720-1789) was a parochial schoolmaster at
Greenock, and the author of a poem on The Clyde, containing
nearly 2,000 lines. He is not to be confounded with Professor
John Wilson, known as ' Christopher North.'

376 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

William Hamilton (1704-1754) was a gentleman of ancient
lineage, and was born in Ayrshire. In 1745 he joined the standard
of Prince Charles, and became the ' Volunteer Laureate ' of the
Jacobites. He was best at the composition of lyric poetry. His
ballad entitled The Braes of Yarrow is considered to be his finest
poem, and is also said to have influenced Wordsworth in the
composition of his charming poems on Yarrow. A complete
edition of Hamilton's poems was published in 1850, edited by
James Patterson.

The Rev. John Skinner (1721-1807), episcopal minister of Long-
side, Aberdeenshire, for sixty-five years, is said to have influenced
the strains of Robert Burns. ' After the troubled period of the
rebellion of 1745, when the episcopal clergy of Scotland laboured
under the charge of disaffection, Skinner was imprisoned six
months for preaching to more than four persons !' He was the
author of Tullochgorum and other poems, chiefly songs.

Robert Crawford (circa 1695-1733) assisted Allan Ramsay in his
Tea-table Miscellany. He was the author of some poems, of which
The Bush aboon Traquair and Tweedside, two excellent lyrics,
deserve special mention.

Lady Grisell Baittie (1665-1746) was a daughter of Sir Patrick
Home, who was raised to the peerage as Earl of Marchmont.
She was born at Redbraes Castle, and married George Baillie,
of Jerviswood. She was the author of a popular Scottish song
entitled Were na my Heart licht.

Sir Gilbert Elliot (1722-1777) was the third Baronet of Minto.
Educated for the Scottish Bar, he rose to be Keeper of the Signet,
and served for twenty years in Parliament. Mr. Tytler, of Wood-
houselee, says that Sir Gilbert was taught the German flute in
France, and introduced it into Scotland about the year 1725.
He was the author of a pastoral song which has been called
' beautiful ' by Sir Walter Scott. It is called Amynta, and begins
thus :

My sheep I neglected, I broke my sheep-hook,
And all the gay haunts of my youth I forsook ;
No more for Amynta fresh garlands I wove ;
For ambition, I said, would soon cure me of love.
Oh, what had my youth with ambition to do ?
Why left I Amynta ? Why broke I my vow ?
Oh, give me my sheep, and my sheep-hook restore.
And I'll wander from love and Amynta no more.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 377

Alexander Ross (1698-1784), a schoolmaster in Lochlee in
Angus, was nearly seventy years old when he published a volume
of verse entitled Helenore ; or, The Fortunate Shepherdess, a
Pastoral Tale in the Scottish Dialect, to which are added a few Songs
by the Author. At least two of the songs are still popular in
Scotland, those being entitled respectively Woo'd, and Married,
and a', and The Rock and the Wee Pickle Tow.

John Lowe (1750-1798) was the son of a gardener at Kenmore,
in Galloway. He was the author of a pretty poem called Mary's
Dream.

Lady Anne Barnard (1750-1825) was the daughter of James
Lindsay, fifth Earl of Balcarres. She married Andrew Barnard,
son of the Bishop of Limerick. She was the author of the popular
ballad Auld Robin Gray, which she composed to an ancient air.
She is said to have kept the authorship a secret for a long time,
until, in 1823, she acknowledged it in a letter to Sir Walter Scott.

Miss Jane Elliot (1727-1805) was a daughter of Sir Gilbert
Elliot of Minto. She was the author of a beautiful ballad called
The Flowers of the Forest. Sir Walter Scott remarked upon the
happy manner in which the ancient minstrels are imitated by Miss
Elliot.

James Macpherson (1738-1796) was ' a sort of literary adven-
turer of rather equivocal reputation.' He was a country school-
master, and the author of a History of Great Britain from the
Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover. He published
at the age of twenty a heroic poem, in six cantos, entitled The
Highlander, ' a miserable production.' But his dubious fame
rests upon the fact that he professed to have accumulated a large
number of fragments of ancient poetry in the Gaelic dialect,
which he attributed to Ossian, ' the Celtic Homer.' These
fragments he professed to have translated, and for awhile he
succeeded in deceiving the public, who subscribed a large sum
to enable him to continue his researches. In 1762 he published
Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books ; and in 1763
Temora, another epic, in eight books. These were also attributed
to Ossian. But the whole collection is now acknowledged to be
an audacious forgery.

378 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Richard Gall (1776-1800) was a printer in Edinburgh. He
was the author of some popular songs, one of which, entitled
Farewell to Ayrshire, has sometimes been wrongly attributed to
Robert Burns, on account of the fact that a copy of it in the
greater poet's handwriting was found amongst his papers.
The most popular of Gall's songs is called My only Jo and
Dearie 0.

Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) is chiefly remembered as a great
writer on natural history, but he wrote some excellent verse.
He was born at Paisley, and followed in turn the callings of
weaver and pedlar. His best poem is Watty and Meg, which
he published anonymously. It was at first attributed to Burns.
Mrs. Burns is responsible for the following story in connection
with it : 'As Burns was one day sitting at his desk by the side
of the window, a well-known hawker, Andrew Bishop, went past
crying, " Watty and Meg, a new ballad, by Robert Burns."
The poet looked out, and said : " That's a lee, Andrew, but I
would make you plack a bawbee if it were mine."

Hector Macneill (1746-1818) was the author of a legendary
poem entitled The Harp, published in 1789, and a moral tale
called Scotland's Skaith ; or, the History of Will and Jean, issued
in 1795. Both the poems are well executed. He also wrote
some lyrics and an excellent descriptive poem entitled The
Links of Forth ; or, A Parting Peep at the Carse of Stirling.

John Mayne (1761-1836) was born in Dumfries. He was a
printer, and at the age of sixteen began the issue of a notable
poem called The Siller Gun. It describes ' an ancient custom
in Dumfries called " Shooting the Siller Gun," the gun being a
small silver tube presented by James VI. to the incorporated
trades as a prize to the best marksman.' Sir Walter Scott
thought the poem came near to those of Burns. Mayne also
wrote some other poems.

Sir Alexander Boswell (1775-1822) was the eldest son of the
biographer of Dr. Johnson. He was the author of a poem called
Edinburgh ; or, The Ancient Royalty, as well as of some popular
songs. He was killed in a duel with Mr. Stuart of Dunearn,
whom he had satirized.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 379

Robert Tannahill (1774-1810) was born in Paisley, and in early
life followed the trade of a weaver. He wrote lyrical poems
of a high order of merit. Amongst his best are The Braes o'
Balquhither, Gloomy Winter's now Awa' , and The Flower o'
Dunblane. He went mad and committed suicide.

Michael Bruce (1746-1767), the son of a weaver, was born
at Kinneswood, in the county of Kinross. In earlier years he was
a cowherd, but on the death of his father he went to Edinburgh
University, where he became distinguished for his application
to study and a proficiency in verse-making. Leaving college
after three sessions, apparently without a degree, he obtained
an appointment as schoolmaster at Gairney Bridge, at a stipend
of £11 per annum. Afterwards he removed to Forest Hill, but
the schoolroom was so low-roofed and damp that he contracted
consumption. He returned to his father's cottage, and died
at the early age of twenty- three. Lochleven, a poem, was written
at Forest Hill, but his best work was an Elegy, written just before
he died. The Elegy begins thus :

'Tis past : the iron North has spent his rage ;

Stern Winter now resigns the lengthening day ;
The stormy howlings of the winds assuage,

And warm o'er ether western breezes play.

John Logan (1748-1788) was born at Fala, in Midlothian.
He became a minister of South Leith. He published a volume
of poems in 1781.' His best poem is an ode To the Cuckoo, and
amongst the others may be mentioned A Visit to the Country in
Autumn, The Lovers, and a ballad on The Braes of Yarrow.

Dr. Thomas Blacklock (1721-1791) was blind. He became
minister of Kirkcudbright. He wrote a number of descriptive
poems which possess no very great merit, but being descriptive,
they excite admiration as the work of one to whom light was
denied.

Dr. James Beattie (1735-1803), the son of a farmer at Laurence-
kirk, in the county of Kincardine, is chiefly remembered as the
author of a fine didactic poem called The Minstrel, written in the
Spenserian stanza. It is ' designed to trace the progress of a
poetical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of
fancy and reason till that period at which he may be supposed

380 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel.' It is a fine
poem, greatly superior to the other poetical works of its author.
Beattie was fortunate enough to receive a pension from the
Crown amounting to £200 a year, and the University of Oxford
conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D.

William Julius Mickle (1734-1788), the son of a Scottish
minister, was born in Dumfriesshire. He was a brewer, but
failed in business, and went to London. Meeting with but little
success, he went to Oxford, and became a ' corrector ' for the
Clarendon Press. Cumnor Hall, which is said to have suggested
the plot of Kenilworth to Sir Walter Scott, is his most popular
poem, but he was the author of several others.

John Home (1722-1808) was a minister of the Scotch Church.
He was the author of a tragedy called Douglas, which is chiefly
remembered now for the lines commencing :

My name is Norval. On the Grampian Hills
My father feeds his flocks.

Sir Walter Scott says of Home that his works ' are, after all,
poorer than I thought them. Good blank verse and stately
sentiment, but something lukewarmish, excepting Douglas,
which is certainly a masterpiece.'

Mrs. Anne Grant (1755-1838) published a volume of poems
in 1803. They are chiefly descriptive of scenes and customs
characteristic of the Highlands of Scotland.

Dr. William Wilkie (1721-1772), a native of Echlin, was Pro-
fessor of Natural Philosophy in St. Andrews University. He
was the author of the Epigoniad, a poem in nine books, founded
on part of the Iliad of Homer. He was very eccentric, and is
said to have worn an enormous quantity of clothes at once,
besides sleeping with two dozen blankets over him in bed.

William Falconer (1732-1769), the son of a barber in Edinburgh,
went to sea in his earlier years. Having escaped shipwreck off
Cape Colonna, in a manner described in one of his poems, he
returned to his native city. His first poem appeared in 1751.
It was a monody on the death of Frederick, Prince of Whales.
The Shipwreck appeared in 1762. It ran through three editions
during the lifetime of the author. It is a remarkably able and
entertaining poem, displaying great talent in description.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 381

Mr. Chambers says : ' The truth of the whole poem is indeed
one of its greatest attractions. We feel that it is a passage of
real life ; and even where the poet seems to violate the canons
of taste and critisism, allowance is liberally made for the peculiar
situation of the author, while he rivets our attention to the scenes
of trial and distress which he so fortunately survived to describe.'

The Rev. James Grahame (1765-1811) was born in Glasgow.
In 1801 he published a dramatic poem entitled Mary, Queen of
Scotland. Later he published The Sabbath, Sabbath Walks, and
other poems. His name is chiefly associated with The Sabbath,
which is his best poem. His writing is moulded on the style
of Cowper, full of Scottish associations, earnest and beautiful in
spirit, but ' somewhat deficient in compactness of picture and
harmony of numbers.' He was a barrister before he took Holy

Orders.

Oh, Scotland, much I love thy tranquil dales ;
But most on Sabbath eve, when low the sun
Slants thro' the upland copse ; 'tis my delight,
Wandering and stopping oft, to hear the song
Of kindred praise arise from humble roofs.

John Leyden (1775-1811) was born at Denholm, in Roxburgh-
shire. He was of humble origin, but fought his own way per-
sistently to distinction, becoming eventually a great classical
and Oriental scholar, with a large knowledge of modern languages.
He was a contributor to Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
His chief poem is entitled Scenes of Infancy, a pretty piece
descriptive of his native place, the Vale of Teviot. His poem
The Mermaid is a masterpiece, and gained the praise of Sir
Walter Scott, who thought it contained beauties, and evinced a
power of numbers which have seldom been excelled in English
poetry.

FROM 'THE MERMAID'

On Jura's heath how sweetly swell

The murmurs of the mountain bee !
How softly mourns the writhed shell

Of Jura's shore, its parent sea !

*****
And ever as the year returns

The charm-bound sailors know the day ;
For sadly still the Mermaid mourns

The lovely chief of Colonsay.

Alexander Thomson (1763-1803) was presumably a Scotchman.
He, at all events, passed his life in Scotland, and died in Edin-

382 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

burgh in 1803. He wrote a poetical Essay on Novels, The
Paradise of Taste, a poem, besides Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies,
and other works.

IRISH POETS

Henry Brooke (1706-1783) was the son of an Irish clergyman.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Afterwards
he went to London, and was patronized by Frederick, Prince
of Wales. He was the author of a poem on Universal Beauty,
which anticipated the manner of Erasmus Darwin's Botanic
Garden. He also wrote a tragedy entitled Gustavus Vasa,
which was supposed to be directed against Sir Robert Walpole.
Its representation was forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain.
He was a versatile writer, his works comprising a novel, plays,
poems, essays, etc. He was a friend of Swift, Pope, and other
great writers of the age. His works were published by his
daughter, in four volumes, in 1792.

John Cunningham (1729-1773) was the son of a wine-cooper
in Dublin. He adopted the stage as a profession, and was for
several years in Edinburgh performing with Digges' Company.
Later in life he became dissipated, and removed to Newcastle-
on-Tyne, where he was indebted for hospitality to ' a generous
printer.' He was the author of some smooth-flowing and
melodious verses, of which we may mention especially a song on
Kate of Aberdeen, and Content, a Pastoral. In 1763 he published
a volume of poems, chiefly pastoral, which elicited high praise
from Dr. Johnson and other competent judges. His Day, a
Pastoral is one of the prettiest poems in the English language.

FROM 'KATE OF ABERDEEN'

The silver moon's enamoured beam

Steals softly through the night,
To wanton with the winding stream,

And kiss reflected light.
To beds of state go, balmy sleep —

'Tis where you've seldom been —
May's vigil while the shepherds keep

With Kate of Aberdeen.

* * * *

Methinks I hear the maids declare

The promised May, when seen,
Not half so fragrant, half so fair,

As Kate of Aberdeen.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 383

Hugh Kelly (1739-1777) was an Irish dramatic poet and a
scurrilous newspaper writer who ' surprised the public by pro-
ducing, in. 1768, a comedy, False Delicacy, which had remarkable
success both • on the fortunes and character of the author.'
Davies says that ' from a low, petulant, absurd, and ill-bred
censurer, Kelly was transformed to the humane, affable, good-
natured, well-bred man.' The profits of the first performance
of the play amounted to £150.

William Drennan (-1754-1820) is remembered as a poet, essayist,
and physician. He was born in Belfast. He wrote the pro-
spectus for the ' United Irishmen,' of which society he was the
founder, as well as many of their addresses and manifestoes.
He was tried for sedition in 1794, but was acquitted. He was
a man of great influence in his time, and the author of many
songs, poems, essays, and articles.

Edward Lysaght (1763-1810) was born at Brickhill, co. Clare.
He was a barrister, and during the Volunteer and Anti-Union
movements few men were more active and none better known.
He was a writer of songs and other poems. One of his best
songs is Our Dear Native Island.

Mrs. Mary Tighe (1773-1810) was a daughter of the Rev.
W. Blackford, and wife of Henry Tighe, M.P. for Wicklow.
Her poem of Psyche is ' founded on the classic fable related by
Apuleius, of the loves of Cupid and Psyche, or the allegory of
Love and the Soul,' and is ' characterized by a graceful volup-
tuousness and brilliancy of colouring rarely excelled.' It was
privately printed in 1805, and was reprinted with other poems
by Mrs. Tighe in 1811.

FROM 'PSYCHE'

The amethyst was there, of violet hue,

And there the topaz shed its golden ray,
The chrysoberyl, and the sapphire blue,

As the clear azure of a sunny day,
Or the mild eyes where amorous glances play ;

The snow-white jasper, and the opal's flame,
The blushing ruby, and the agate gray,

And there the gem that bears his luckless name
Whose death, by Phoebus, mourned, insured him deathless fame.

384 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Thomas Dermody (1775-1802) was born at Ennis. More
precocious than Pope, he wrote at ten years of age a great deal
of poetry which was afterwards read with applause. Even at
that early age he is said to have been a confirmed drunkard,
and this scourge, which was hereditary, pursued him through
life. Despite his own great genius, and his many friends'
persistent efforts, it plunged him again and again into ruin, and
at length destroyed him at the early age of twenty-seven.
Dermody has been called ' The Chatterton of Ireland.' The
following lines are from a poem on Songs :

O tender Songs !
Heart-heavings of the breast, that longs

Its best-beloved to meet ;
You tell of Love's delightful hours,
Of meetings amid jasmine bowers,
And vows, like perfume of young flowers,

As fleeting — but more sweet.

*****

O mournful Songs
When sorrow's host, in gloomy throngs,

Assail the widowed heart ;
You sing in softly-soothing strain,
The praise of those whom death has ta'en,
And tell that we shall meet again,

And meet no more to part.

O lovely Songs —
Breathings of Heaven ! to you belongs

The empire of the heart,
Enthroned in memory, still reign
O'er minds of prince and peer and swain,
With gentle power that knows not wane

Till thought and life depart.

The Rev. Dr. Philip Francis (1719-1773) was the son of the
Very Rev. John Francis, D.D., Dean of Lismore, and father of
Sir Philip Francis, who is supposed to have been the writer of
the letters of Junius. Dr. Francis was the author of a well-
known translation of Horace, which appeared in 1743, and was
pronounced by Dr. Johnson to be the best in the English language.
He died at Bath on the 5th of March, 1773.

Richard West (1716-1742) was the son of the Right Hon.
R. West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. He was a friend of Gray
and Walpole. He was the author of an able poem called Ad
Amicos, written in his twentieth year, and other verses.

MINOR POETS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 385

WELSH POETS

The Rev. John Dyer (circa 1698-1758) was a native of Aber-
glasslyn, in the county of Carmarthen. He was educated at
Westminster School. He was the son of a solicitor, and was
originally intended to follow the same calling. The future
poet, however, was artistically inclined, and took to travel
instead, studying the art of painting with much care both in
England and Italy. ' He was not very successful as an artist,
and on his return to England took Holy Orders. During his
absence he had published his greatest poem, Grongar Hill,
which appeared in 1726. This poem is written in short rhymed
lines of seven and eight syllables, and is very sweet and tuneful,
with a certain richness of poetic fancy which is pleasing to the
reader. In 1757 he published his longest poem, The Fleece,
which is not so striking a work as the former. The poet died
a few months after its publication, having held successively the
livings -of Calthorp, Coningsby, Belchford, and Kirkby. Dyer
was praised by Wordsworth and Gray. The latter, in a letter
to Walpole, says : ' Dyer has more of poetry in his imagination
than almost any of our number ; but rough and injudicious.'
Of these two sentiments, the former may be taken as applicable
to Grongar Hill, and the latter as illustrated by The Fleece.
Dyer published another poem in 1740, but anonymously. It is
written in blank verse, and is entitled The Ruins of Rome. A
few lines will give a good idea of the style of Grongar Hill :

Below me trees unnumbered rise,

Beautiful in various dyes :

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,

The yellow beech, the sable yew,

The slender fir, that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.

And beyond the purple grove,

Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love.

Robert Davies (1769-1835), better known as Bard Nantglyn,
obtained eleven medals on different occasions for his prize
poems, and many prizes in money. One of his best was on the
Death of George III.

Evan Evans (1730-1789) was an eminent poet and antiquary.
He was educated at Merton College, Oxford. In 1764 he pub-

25

386 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

lished a volume of Ancient Welsh Poems. He also published an
original poem in English, entitled The Love of our Country, and
several in Welsh.

John Bradford (died in 1780), an ingenious poet, was admitted
a disciple of the bardic chair of Glamorgan in 1730. being then a
boy. He presided in the same chair in 1760. He was the author
of several moral pieces of great merit, some of which are printed
in the Eurgrawn, a Welsh magazine.

Hugh Hughes (1722-1776) was an Anglesey poet. It does not
appear that he obtained any great advantages in his earl}'
education, but having natural abilities of a high order, he became
a good scholar, and wrote several poems in Welsh and English.

Richard Llwyd (1752-1835) was generally known as the Bard
of Snowdon. In 1800 he published Beaumaris Bay, a poem x>f
great merit. He also wrote a number of odes, sonnets, etc.

Goronwy Owen (1722-1770) was one of the greatest of the
Welsh poets. His compositions are deservedly admired for their
poetical beauties. They were first published in 1763.

GREATER POETS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS

HENRY KIRKE WHITE

1785-1806

PRECOCIOUS, brilliant, ardent, amiable, lamented. Such are
some of the adjectives which every biographer of this young
poet must use if he would do full justice to his theme. To have
attained celebrity as a British poet at the age of twenty-one years,
and then to leave the world in mourning for his untimely end,
must stamp a man at once as endowed with uncommon genius.
And this is true of Henry Kirke White, who was born on the
2 ist of March, 1785, His father was a butcher, and his mother,
whose maiden name was Neville, was a member of a respectable
Staffordshire famijy. At the age of three Henry, their second
son, was sent to a preparatory school kept by a Mrs. Garrington,
who taught him to read and write, and was the first person to
take notice of his love for the acquisition of knowledge. He
was removed to a larger school at Nottingham when he was
six years old. It is recorded of him that while at this academy
he showed extraordinary precocity, and one day composed,
with singular ease, a separate theme for every boy in the class,
numbering fourteen in all. In his fourteenth year he was taken
from this school, and placed under the care of Mr. Shipley.
Very soon he began to give proof of his poetical gifts. He wrote
lines On being Confined to School one Summer Morning, and an
Address to Contemplation, which gave prophetic proof of his genius.
He was at first designed for the trade of a butcher, and was
employed out of school hours as a messenger boy by his father.
Not caring for this, he was sent into a hosier's shop to learn that

387 25—2

388 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

business, but he objected to ' folding up stockings ' as much
as he had previously scorned the carrying of a basket. He
was therefore apprenticed to a solicitor in 1799. He now worked
hard at his profession, and in his leisure moments applied himself
to the study of Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

In addition to these he studied astronomy, electricity,
chemistry, drawing, and music. At the age of fifteen he had
gained a silver medal from the Monthly Preceptor for a transla-
tion from Horace, and he continued to write verses with great
diligence. On becoming a member of a literary society in Not-
tingham, he astonished the other members by lecturing ably for
two hours on Genius. For this feat they elected him Professor
of Literature. Encouraged by these successes, he prepared a
volume of poems for the press, and they were issued in 1803.
A critic in the Monthly Review attacked him with such malignant
severity that the censure haunted him incessantly, and he ' was
persuaded that it was an instrument in the hands of Satan to
drive him to destruction.' But the volume fell into the hands
of Robert Southey, who recognised its merits, and gave his
friendship and encouragement to the young author, and ' this
very review, which was destined to crush the hopes of Henry,
has been, in its consequences, the main occasion of bringing his
Remains to light, and obtaining for him that fame which,
assuredly will be his portion.'

Through this timely sympathy of Southey and others who
were drawn towards the young poet he was enabled to enter
St. John's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, with a view to obtaining
Holy Orders. Here he studied with great diligence, but for a
time his opinions inclined to Deism. A fellow-student, however,
lent him Scott's Force of Truth, with the result that he became
a convert to the orthodox teachings of the Christian faith.
For awhile he laid aside poetry, and read for a scholarship,
coming out first in the examination. He also obtained exhi-
bitions to the value of £66 per annum. But all this was at the
sacrifice of his health, and he died on October 19, 1806, honoured
and lamented by all who knew him. Shortly before his death
he wrote these memorable words, which read like a fitting
epitaph : ' Were I to paint Fame crowning an undergraduate
after the senate-house examination, I would represent him as
concealing a death's-head under the mask of beauty.'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 389

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

When marshalled on the nightly plain,

The glittering host bestud the sky ;
One star alone, of all the train,

Can fix the sinner's wandering eye.
Hark ! hark ! to God the chorus breaks,

From every host, from every gem ;
But one alone the Saviour speaks —

It is the Star of Bethlehem.

Once on the raging seas I rode,

The storm was loud — the night was dark ;
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed

The wind that tossed my foundering bark.
Deep horror then my vitals froze,

Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem ;
When suddenly a star arose —

It was the star of Bethlehem.

It was my guide, my light, my all,

It bade my dark forebodings cease ;
And through the storm and danger's thrall,

It led me to the port of peace.
Now safely moored — my perils o'er,

I'll sing, first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore,

The Star — the Star of Bethlehem.

INSTABILITY OF HUMAN GLORY

Oh how weak

Is mortal man ! how trifling — how confined
His scope of vision ! Puff'd with confidence,
His phrase grows big with immortality,
And he, poor insect of a summer's day !
Dreams of eternal honours to his name ;
Of endless glory and perennial bays.
He idly reasons of eternity,
As of the train of ages, — when, alas !
Ten thousand thousand of his centuries
Are, in comparison, a little point
Too trivial for account. Oh, it is strange,
'Tis passing strange, to mark his fallacies !
Behold him proudly view some pompous pile,
Whose high dome swells to emulate the skies,
And smile, and say, My name shall live with this
Till Time shall be no more ; while at his feet,
Yea, at his very feet, the crumbling dust
Of the fallen fabric of the other day
Preaches the solemn lesson. — He should know
That Time must conquer ; that the loudest blast
That ever fill'd Renown's obstreperous trump
; Fades in the lapse of ages, and expires.
Who lies inhumed in the terrific gloom
Of the gigantic pyramid ? or who
Rear'd its huge walls ? Oblivion laughs and says.
The prey is mine.— They sleep, and never more
Their names shall strike upon the ear of man,
Till memory burst its fetters.

390 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE

Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire !
Whose modest form, so delicately fine,

Was nursed in whirling storms,

And cradled in the winds.

Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter's sway.
And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight,

Thee on its bank he threw,

To mark his victory.

In this low vale, the promise of the year,
Serene, thou openest to the nipping gale,

Unnoticed and alone,

Thy tender elegance.

So Virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms
Of chill adversity ; in some lone walk

Of life she rears her head,

Obscure and unobserved ;

While every bleaching breeze that on her blows,
Chastens her spotless purity of breast,

And hardens her to bear

Serene the ills of life.

SONNET
TO MY MOTHER

And canst thou, mother, for a moment think,
That we, thy children, when old age shall shed
Its blanching honours on thy weary head,

Could from our best of duties ever shrink ?

Sooner the sun from his bright sphere shall sink,
Than we ungrateful leave thee in that day,
To pine in solitude thy life away,

Or shun thee tottering on the grave's cold brink.

Banish the thought ! — where'er our steps may roam.
O'er smiling plains, or wastes without a tree,

Still will fond memory point our hearts to thee,

And paint the pleasures of thy peaceful home ;
While duty bids us all thy griefs assuage,
And smoothe the pillow of thy sinking age.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
1770-1850

THE Lake School of Poetry was founded by William Wordsworth,
a native of Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, in which
place he was born on the 7th of April, 1770. At the age of eight
years he was sent to school at Hawkshead, situated in the most
beautiful part of Lancashire. At this school the scholars,

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 391

instead of being boarded in the same house as the head-master,
were housed amongst the residents in the village. There can
be but little doubt that the picturesque surroundings in which
his earlier years were spent did much to foster the spirit of poesy
which was a part of himself. His parents died while he was
yet a boy, and the future poet was left to the care of his uncles,
Richard Wordsworth and Christopher Crackanthorpe, who
sent him in 1787 to St. John's College, Cambridge. There
he remained for four years, after which he took his degree.
During his undergraduate course he studied a great deal, wrote
verses, learnt some Italian, and. in vacation time, went upon
sundry tours, making an expedition to France, during the
Revolution, in the autumn of 1790. At this period the internal
strife was as its height, and the soul of the poet was fired with a
desire to champion the cause of liberty. Accordingly, having
completed his University course, he went again to France in the
following year, and remained there for fifteen months, narrowly
escaping the guillotine by a timely return to England in 1792.
Politics were not in Wordsworth's line. The beauties of nature
were more within the grasp of his genius to read and moralize
upon than were the intricacies of national affairs.

The Lake School derived its name from the fact that Words-
worth, Southey, and Coleridge, its three most famous members,
resided in the vicinity of the English lakes. The expression
was at first used somewhat contemptuously, but in time it came
to be looked upon as a fitting title for Wordsworth and his
imitators.

Mr. Stopford Brooke does not approve of the title ' Lake Poets.'
He says : ' Of all the poets misnamed Lake Poets? Wordsworth
was the greatest.' Yet the title seems natural, and quite
harmless in its way.

The necessity for earning a livelihood had led the young poet
to take up journalism as a profession, when Calvert, a friend of
his, died, leaving him a legacy of £900, with a request that he
would devote himself to the work of a poet.

As a consequence of this piece of good fortune he settled down
with his sister in Somersetshire, and not long afterwards made
the acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who became his
bosom friend and companion. Coleridge went to live at Nether
Stowey, and Wordsworth took a house at Alfoxden, three miles

392 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

away. Thus the two friends were enabled to see a great deal
of each other.

Having taken a holiday in Germany, the poet went with
his sister to Grasmere, in the neighbourhood of his childhood,
where he resided for eight years. During this period he married,
and wrote the beginning of his greatest poem, The Excursion.
On the death of the Earl of Lonsdale, a sum of .£8,500 was
paid to the Wordsworth family, in liquidation of a debt. Of
this sum the poet received ^1,800. This enabled him to look
forward to a life of comparative ease, in which he might devote
some of his best energies to the cultivation of his muse. In
1808 he went to live at Allan Bank, and in 1813 he removed to
Rydal Mount, where he spent the greater portion of his life.

' A life of seclusion like Wordsworth's,' says one of his
numerous biographers, ' presents no incidents. At Rydal
Mount, so long his residence, he lived apart amongst the hills,
and surveyed with a philosopher's eye the tempest of the world,
undisturbed except by the roar of a rude review, over the flowers
of his muse.'

It was the wish of Wordsworth's friends that he should take
Holy Orders, but his own inclinations did not tend in that
direction. The love of poetry absorbed all his thoughts, and
formed the grand passion of his life. Through the influence of
Lord Lonsdale he was appointed Distributor of Stamps for the
counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, at a salary of ,£500
a year ; and being thus independent of the emoluments accruing
from the exercise of his peculiar genius, which might have fallen
short of a competency at times, he was enabled to indulge for half
a century the bent of his poetic mind amid surroundings of
inspiring beauty.

In 1835 the poet was awarded a pension of £300 a year by
the Government of Sir Robert Peel, and he relinquished his post
of Distributor of Stamps in favour of his son. On the death of
Southey he was appointed Poet-Laureate, and in 1838 and 1839
the Universities of Durham and Oxford conferred upon him the
honorary degree of D.C.L. He died at Rydal Mount on the
anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, the 23rd of April, 1850, and
was laid to rest in the peaceful churchyard of Grasmere.

Wordsworth and his friend Coleridge struggled hard against
the ridicule which was levelled against them and their little

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 393

' school.' The sneer passed away, and its place was taken by
the smile of welcome, the nod of approval, and, finally, the
applause of admiration and wonder. Thus, slowly but surely,
the imaginings and philosophies of an entirely new cult won
their way into popular esteem. Indeed, Wordsworth, though he
seems to have been with us but yesterday, is already a classic.
During the last fifty years his star has been steadily rising into
the clear sky of popularity, and has perhaps not yet reached
its zenith. Amongst his English contemporaries he stands
foremost as the poet of common life and commonplace things
and fancies. There are in his poems some traces of German
inspiration, but in the main features of his verse we find
clearly depicted specimens of all that is best in modern English
poesy.

Dr. Collier thus graphically describes the method of Words-
worth : ' Choosing the simplest speech of educated Englishmen
as a vehicle for the expression of their thoughts, and passing
by with quiet scorn the used-up subjects of the Romancists —
the military hero waving his red sword amid battle smoke ;
the assassin watching from the dark shadow of a vaulted doorway
his unconscious victim, who strolls, singing in the white moon-
light, down the empty street ; the lover " sighing like furnace
with a woeful ballad made to his mistress's eyebrow," and
kindred themes — the poets of the Lake School took their subjects
often from among the commonest things, and wrote their poems
in the simplest style. Bending a reverent ear to the mysterious
harmonies of Nature, to the ceaseless song of praise that rises
from every blade of grass and every dewdrop, warbles in the
fluting of every lark, and sweeps to heaven in every wave of
air, they formed in their own deep hearts a musical echo of that
song, and shaping into words the swelling of their inward faith,
they spoke to the world in a way to which the world was little
used, about things in which the world saw no poetic beauty.
The history of a hard-hearted hawker of earthenware and his
ass, the adventures of Betty Foy's idiot son, and the wanderings
of an old pedlar, are among the themes chosen by Wordsworth
for the utterance of his poetic soul. As of old the Puritans had
done in political and domestic life, the Lakists went too far in
their disdain for the conventional ornaments and subjects for
poetry. But their theory, a healthful one, based on sound

394 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

principles, made an impression on the British mind deeper and
more lasting than many think. Like that ozone or electrified
oxygen in the natural air, upon which, say chemists, our health
and spirits depend, its subtle influence is ever stealing through
the atmosphere of our national thought, quickening the scattered
germs of a truer and purer philosophy than has yet prevailed.'

Wordsworth's first appearance as an author was in 1793,
when he published, ' hurriedly, though reluctantly,' two little
poems, entitled respectively An Evening Walk and Descriptive
Sketches. The former was written between the years 1787 and
1789, and contains a description of the scenery of the English
lakes. The style of this essay, suggestive in a measure of Pope,
is full of early promise, though not altogether ' finished.' The
Descriptive Sketches were written at Blois and Orleans in 1791
and 1792. Amongst his subsequent works may be noted Salisbury
Plain ; or, Guilt and Sorrow, a portion of which, entitled The
Female Vagrant, appeared in 1798, but which was not published
in extenso until 1842. In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge
produced between them a collection called Lyrical Ballads,
which was designed to furnish funds for a little excursion.
Of the twenty-three poems contained in this volume, Coleridge
contributed The Ancient Mariner, The Nightingale, The Foster-
Mother's Tale, and The Dungeon. The rest were by Wordsworth.
This book is said to have 'fallen almost dead from the press,"
and yet ' may be justly described as marking an epoch in our
literature.'

During his sojourn at Grasmere Wordsworth produced a
great deal of excellent poetry. He also wrote his historic
Preface on Poetic Style and Diction for the second edition of
the Lyrical Ballads. In this essay he tells us something of his
own methods, declaring that his object was to ascertain how
far the purposes of poetry might be fulfilled ' by fitting to
metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men
in a state of vivid sensation.' He anxiously insists that all
poetry is laid under ' a necessity of producing immediate
pleasure/ and also dwells upon the fact or theory that ' the end
of poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an over-
balance of pleasure.' His dictum becomes questionable when he
further asserts that the poet's function is limited to an exact
representation of the natural and the real. Yet in the Lyrical

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 395

Ballads themselves there is scarce one which is not conspicuous
for some ray of vivid poetic brilliance which a merely 'exact ' ..
representation would hardly set forth.

In 1807 appeared two volumes which contained his first
sonnets, The Happy Warrior, Intimations of Immortality, the
Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, and other notable poems.
His greatest and most philosophical work, The Excursion, was
published in 1814. Noble as it is in conception and execution,
it is no more than a fragment of a projected moral epic which
the poet had intended to designate The Recluse, and in which
he had hoped to portray the profoundest secrets and highest
aspirations of the human soul. Great as it unquestionably is,
the number of those who read, and still more of those who under-
stand, its depths of reasoning must always be limited. It is a
poem for the thoughtful. The old Scotch pedlar and his com-
panions are calculated to bore rather than interest or amuse
the ordinary reader, who has not the time or the inclination to
follow out the argument. To the careful student of the
characteristics and destinies of his fellow-men, however, Words-
worth's masterpiece will ever furnish an unfailing source of profit
and delight.

The White Doe of Rylstone was given to the world in 1815,
and Peter Bell in 1819. Other works followed, such as Yarrow
Revisited, and other Poems, Ecclesiastical Sketches, and Memorials
of a Tour on the, Continent. He was unsurpassed in the com-
position of the sonnet, a form of verse of which he was extremely
fond. To use his own expression with regard to Milton :

' In his hand

' The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
' Soul-animating strains.'

A sketch of Wordsworth would hardly be complete without
some mention of the peculiar sweetness of such a poem as We
are Seven, which alone would have called attention to his muse,
and in which he sets forth with consummate skill a touching
example of child philosophy.

A recent critic, Mr. Basil Worsfold, says that ' the frequent
loss of poetic quality removes Wordsworth from the class of
the supreme masters of song. On the other hand, the tendency
to which it was due impelled him to a deeper significance of
thought. If the weight of this thought is sometimes too heavy

396 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

for its literary vehicle to carry with perfect grace ; if he was
unable to build up an epic like Milton : if he rarely invests his
verse with the lyric enthusiasm of Shelley, he gave his poetry,
as a whole, the sustaining fertility of philosophy, the freshness
and vigour of original observation, and the tender sincerity of
a life set four-square with the noblest aspirations of the race.
When he is at his best, few wear the poet's robe more royally
than he. ' Since Milton,' Coleridge writes, ' I know of no
poet with so many felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas
as you.' And in truth it was Wordsworth that first among
the poets of the nineteenth century fed his torch with the
Elizabethan tradition of free art, and illumined a new region in
the universe of mind.'

In an admirable and exhaustive work on Wordsworth recently
issued by Mr. Walter Raleigh, we get a glance at the poet's
personality. Like Tennyson, he was a dreamer who, in his
exaltation of Nature as the best teacher of man, ' held fast to
the loftiest conception of the poet's office, and advanced the
largest claims for the poet's power to benefit mankind.' He
loitered amongst the country folks of the Lake District ' in no
mood of artless companionship, but intent on what he might
learn ; he was an acolyte, not a boon-fellow.' What impression
concerning his character was made upcn his rustic neighbours
may be gathered from one of Canon Rawnsley's Reminiscences,
founded upon the recollections of an old innkeeper : ' Many's
the time I've seed him a takin' his family out in a string, and
niver geein' the deaniest bit of notice to 'em ; standin' by hissel'
and stoppin' behind agapin', wi' his jaws workin' the whoal
time ; but niver no crackin' wi' 'em — a desolate-minded man,
ye kna. ... It was potry as did it.'

A SIMILE

Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp ; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer eve,
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light
In the green trees ; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
[ Into a substance glorious as her own,

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 397

Yea, with her own incorporated, by power

Capacious and serene ; like power abides

In Man's celestial spirit ; Virtue thus

Sets forth and magnifies herself ; thus feeds

A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,

From the incumbrances of mortal life,

From error, disappointment — nay, from guilt ;

And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,

From palpable oppressions of Despair.

THOUGHTS ON REVISITING THE WYE

Oh ! how oft,

In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight, when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft in spirit have I turned to thee,

0 sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer through the woods —
How often has my spirit turned to thee !

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again,

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years. And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first

1 came among these hills ; when, like a roe,
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led ; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then —
The coarser pleasures of my boyish days

And their glad animal movements all gone by —
To me was all in all — I cannot paint
What then I was.

HART-LEAP WELL

Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water about five miles from Rich-
mond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond
to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the memory
of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second part
of the following poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there
described them.

The Knight had ridden down from Wensley Moor
With the slow motion of a summer's cloud ;

He turned aside towards a vassal's door,
And ' Bring another horse !' he cried aloud.

' Another horse !' — That shout the vassal heard
And saddled his best steed, a comely gray ;

Sir Walter mounted him ; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

398 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes ;

The Horse and Horseman are a happy pair ;
But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,

There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's Hall,
That as they galloped made the echoes roar ;

But horse and man are vanished, one and all ;
Such race, I think, was never seen before.

Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind,

Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain ;

Blanch, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind,
Follow, and up the weary mountain strain.

The Knight hallooed, he cheered, and chid them on,
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern ;

But breath and eyesight fail ; and, one by one,
The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern.

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race ?

The bugles that so joyfully were blown ?
This Chase it looks not like an earthly Chase ;

Sir Walter and the Hart are left alone.

The poor hart toils along the mountain side ;

I will not stop to tell how far he fled,
Nor will I mention by what death he died ;

But now the Knight beholds him lying dead.

Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn ;

He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy :
He neither cracked his whip, nor blew his horn,

But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.

Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned,
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious feat ;

WTeak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned ;
And white with foam as if with cleaving sleet.

Upon his side the hart was lying stretched :
His nostril touched a spring beneath a hill,

And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched
The waters of the spring were trembling still.

And now, too happy for repose or rest,
(Never had living man such joyful lot !)

Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west,
And gazed and gazed upon that darling spot.

And climbing up the hill — (it was at least
Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found

Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast
Had left imprinted on the grassy ground.

Sir Walter wiped his face, and cried, ' Till now
Such sight was never seen by living eyes :

Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow,
Down to the very fountain where he lies.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 399

' I'll build a pleasure-house upon this spot,

And a small arbour, made for rural joy ;
'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot,

A place of love for damsels that are coy.

' A cunning artist will I have to frame

A basin for that Fountain in the dell !
And they who do make mention of the same.

From this day forth, shall call it HART-LEAP WELL.

' And, gallant Stag ! to make *hy praises known,

Another monument shall here be raised ;
Three several Pillars, each a rough-hewn stone,

And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed.

' And in the summer-time when days are long,

I will come hither with my paramour ;
And with the dancers and the minstrel's song

We will make merry in that pleasant bower.

' Till the foundations of the mountains fail
My Mansion with its arbour shall endure : —

The joy of them who till the fields of Swale,

And them who dwell among the woods of Ure !'

Then home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead,

With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring. —

Soon did the Knight perform what he had said,
And far and wide the fame thereof did ring.

Ere thrice the Moon into her port had steered,

A Cup of stone received the living Well ;
Three Pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared,

And built a House of Pleasure in the dell.

And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall,

With trailing plants and trees were intertwined, —

Which sopn composed a little sylvan hall,
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.

And thither, when the summer-days were long,

Sir Walter led his wondering paramour ;
And with the dancers and the minstrel's song

Made merriment within that pleasant bower.

The Knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time.

And his bones lie in his paternal vale. —
But there is matter for a second rhyme,

And I to this would add another tale.

PART SECOND

The moving accident is not my trade ;

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts ;
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,

To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair,
It chanced that I saw standing in a dell

Three aspens at three corners of a square ;
And one, not four yards distant, near a well.

400 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

What this imported I could ill divine :

And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,

I saw three pillars standing in a line,
The last stone pillar on a dark hilltop.

The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head ;

Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green ;
So that you just might say, as then I said,

' Here in old time the hand of man hath been.'

I looked upon the hill both far and near,

More doleful place did never eye survey ;
It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,

And Nature here were willing to decay.

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,
When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired,

Came up the hollow : — him did I accost,

And what this place might be I then inquired.

The Shepherd stopped, and that same story told
Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed.

' A jolly place,' said he, ' in times of old !

But something ails it now ; the spot is cursed.

' You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood —
Some say that they are beeches, others elms —

These were the bower ; and here a mansion stood.
The finest palace of a hundred realms !

' The arbour does its own condition tell ;

You see the stones, the fountain, and the Stream :
But as to the great lodge ! you might as well

Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.

' There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone ;

And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,

This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.

Some say that here a murder has been done,
And blood cries out for blood : but, for my part,
I've guessed, when I've been sitting in the sun,
That it was all for that unhappy hart.

' What thoughts must through the creature's brain have past !

Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep,
Are but three bounds — and look, Sir, at this last —

— O Master ! it has been a cruel leap.

' For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race ;

And in my simple mind we cannot tell
What cause the hart might have to love this place,

And come and make his deathbed near the Well.

' Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,
Lulled by this fountain in the summer-tide ;

This water was perhaps the first he drank

When he had wandered from his mother's side.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 401

> In April here beneath the scented thorn

He heard the birds their morning carols sing ;

And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born
Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.

' Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade ;

The sun on drearier hollow never shone ;
So will it be, as I have often said,

Till trees, and stones, and fountain, all are gone.'

' Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ;

Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This beast not unobserved by Nature fell ;

His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

' The Being, that is in the clouds and air,

That is in the green leaves among the groves,

Maintains a deep and reverential care

For the unoffending creatures whom He loves.

' The pleasure-house is dust : — behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom ;

But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

' She leaves these objects to a slow decay,

That what we are, and have been, may be known ;

But, at the coming of the milder day,

These monuments shall all be overgrown.

' One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'

THE REDBREAST AND THE BUTTERFLY

Art thofu the Bird whom Man loves best,
The pious Bird with the scarlet breast,

Our little English Robin ;
The Bird that comes about our doors
When Autumn winds are sobbing ?
Art thou the Peter of Norway boors ?

Their Thomas in Finland,

And Russia far inland ?
The Bird, who by some name or other
All men who know thee call their Brother,
The Darling of children and men ?
Could Father Adam1 open his eyes
And see the sight beneath the skies,
He'd wish to close them again.

If the Butterfly knew but his friend,
Hither his flight he would bend ;
And find his way to me,
Under the branches of the tree :

See Paradise Lost, Book XI., where Adam points out to Eve the
ominous sign of the eagle chasing ' two birds of gayest plume,' and the
gentle hart and hind pursued by their enemy. J

26

4.02 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

In and out, he darts about ;
Can this be the bird, to man so good,
That after their bewildering,
Covered with leaves the little Children,
So painfully in the wood ?

What ailed thee, Robin, that thou could'st pursue

A beautiful Creature,
That is gentle by Nature ?
Beneath the summer sky
From flower to flower let him fly ;
'Tis all that he wishes to do.
The cheerer thou of our indoor sadness,
He is the friend of our summer gladness ;
What hinders, then, that ye should be
Playmates in the sunny weather,
And fly about in the air together ?
His beautiful wings in crimson are drest,
A crimson as bright as thine own :
If thou would'st be happy in thy nest,
O pious Bird ! whom man loves best,
Love him or leave him alone !

THE PET LAMB
A PASTORAL

The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink ;

I heard a voice ; it said, ' Drink, pretty creature, drink !'

And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied

A snow-white mountain lamb with a maiden at its side.

No other sheep were near, the lamb was all alone,
And by a slender cord was tethered to a stone ;
With one knee on the grass did the little maiden kneel,
While to that mountain lamb she gave its evening meal.

The lamb, while from her hand he thus his supper took,

Seemed to feast with head and ears ; and his tail with pleasure shook.

' Drink, pretty creature, drink,1 she said in such a tone

That I almost received her heart into my own.

'Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty rare !
I watched them with delight, they were a. lovely pair.
Now with her empty can the maiden turned away :
But ere ten yards were gone her footsteps did she stay.

Towards the lamb she looked ; and from that shady place
.1 unobserved could see the workings of her face :
If Nature to her tongue could measured numbers bring,
Thus, thought I, to her lamb that little maid might sing :

' What ails thee, young one ? what ? Why pull so at thy cord ?
Is it not well with thee ? well both for bed and board ?
Thy plot of grass is soft, and green as grass can be :
Rest, little young one, rest ; what is't that aileth thee ?

' What is it thou wouldst seek ? What is wanting to thy heart ?
Thy limbs are they not strong ? And beautiful thou art :
This grass is tender grass ; these flowers they have no peers ;
And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears !

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 403

' If the Sun be shining hot, do but stretch thy woollen chain,
This beech is standing by, its covert thou canst gain ;
For rain and mountain storms ! the like thou need'st not fear —
The rain and storm are things that scarcely can come here.

' Rest, little young one, rest ; thou hast forgot the day
When my father found thee first in places far away ;
Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert owned by none,
And thy mother from thy side for evermore was gone.

' He took thee in his arms, and in pity brought thee home :
A blessed day for thee ! then whither would st thou roam ?
A faithful nurse thou hast ; the dam that did thee yean
Upon the mountain tops no kinder could have been.

' Thou knowest that twice a day I have brought thee in this can

Fresh water from the brook, as clear as ever ran ;

And twice in the day, when the ground is wet with dew,

1 bring thee draughts of milk, warm milk it is and new.

4 Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now,
Then I'll yoke thee to my cart like a pony in the plough ;
My playmate thou shalt be ; and when the wind is cold
Our hearth shall be thy bed, our house shall be thy fold.

' It will not, will not rest ! — Poor creature, can it be
That 'tis thy mother's heart which is working so in thee ?
Things that I know not of belike to thee are dear,
And dreams of things which thou canst neither see nor hear.

' Alas, the mountain tops that look so green and fair !
I've heard of fearful winds and darkness that come there ;
The little brooks that seem all pastime and all play,
When they are angry, roar like lions for their prey.

' Here thou need'st not dread the raven in the sky ;
Night and day thou art safe, — our cottage is hard by.
Why bleat so after me ? Why pull so at thy chain ?
Sleep — and at break of day I will come to thee again !'

— As homeward through the lane I went with lazv feet,
This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat ;
And it seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line,
That but half of it was hers, and one half of it was mine.

Again, and once again, did I repeat the song ;

' Nay,' said I, ' more than half to the Damsel must belong,

For she looked with such a look, and she spake with such a tone,

That I almost received her heart into mv own.'

WE ARE SEVEN

A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death ?

I met a little cottage girl :

She was eight years old, she said ;
Her hair was thick with many a curl

That clustered round her head.

26 — 2

404 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

She had a rustic, woodland air,

And she was wildly clad ;
Her eyes were fair, and very fair ;

Her beauty made me glad.

' Sisters and brothers, little maid,

How many may you be ?'
' How many ? Seven in all,' she said,

And wondering looked at me.

' And where are they ? I pray you tell
She answered, ' Seven are we ;

And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

' Two of us in the churchyard lie,

My sister and my brother ;
And, in the churchyard cottage, I

Dwell near them with my mother.'

' You say that two at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven ! — I pray you tell,

Sweet maid, how this may be.'

Then did the little maid reply,
' Seven boys and girls are we ;

Two of us in the churchyard lie,
Beneath the churchyard tree.'

' You run about, my little maid,

Your limbs they are alive ;
If two are in the churchyard laid,

Then ye are only five.'

' Their graves are green, they may be seen,'

The little maid replied,
' Twelve steps or more from my mother's door.

And they are side by side.

' My stockings there I often knit,

My kerchief there I hem ;
And there upon the ground I sit —

I sit and sing to them.

• And often after sunset, sir,

When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,

And eat my supper there.

' The first that died was little Jane ;

In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain ;

And then she went away.

' So in the churchyard she was laid •

And when the grass was dry;
Together round her grave we played.

My brother John and 1.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 405

' And when the ground was white with snow,

And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,

And he lies by her side.'

' How many are you then,' said I,

If they two are in heaven ?'
The little maiden did reply,

' O master ! we are seven.'

' But they are dead ; those two are dead !

Their spirits are in heaven !'
'Twas throwing words away ; for still
The little maid would have her will,

And said, ' Nay, we are seven !'

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

1772-1834

THE subject of this sketch has been described as ' the most
imaginative of modern poets.' The youngest son of the Vicar of
Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, he was born on the 2ist of Octo-
ber, 1772. Left an orphan at an early age, he obtained, through
the influence of a friend, an entry to Christ's Hospital, from
whence he proceeded in due course to Jesus College, Cambridge,
in his nineteenth year. He took no honours at the University,
for, though passionately addicted to reading, his methods were
too desultory to be of use to him in the examination hall. At
this time, too, he imbibed opinions which did more than savour
of Socinianism, and this still further interfered with his prospects
of distinction. In his second year of student life he fled from
his college and enlisted, under the assumed name of Comberbach,
in the I5th Dragoons. After two months he grew tired of
soldiering, and appealed to his friends, who bought him out.
He returned to Cambridge, but subsequently left the University
in December, 1794, without having obtained a degree.

Coleridge now attached himself to Southey and another
young poet named Lovell. Amongst them they conceived a
curious and somewhat Utopian scheme, which proved abortive,
happily for its authors. Coleridge was the originator of the
quaint idea. He proposed that they should go to the banks
of the Susquehanna, in North America, and found there a model
republic, which should be a home of universal unselfishness,
in which there should be absolute equality amongst the inhabi-

406 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

tants and a community of goods. The system of government,
or lack of it, was to be called ' Pantisocracy.' But sufficient
funds were not forthcoming to carry the scheme into effect.
The French Revolution was at the bottom of this wild conceit,
the youth of Britain being at this time strangely animated and
fired by the new doctrines "of liberty being inculcated in unhappy
France. The three friends found solace for their failure in a
little while. They entered the bonds of matrimony with three
sisters at Bristol, and their republicanism made way for more
serious pursuits. Southey went to Portugal, and Coleridge
turned his attention to literature in all seriousness, intending
to make it his profession. He made the acquaintance of Words-
worth in the South of England, an acquaintance which rapidly
ripened into a close friendship.

Coleridge's first venture in publication appeared in 1796.
It consisted of a small volume of poems, which Joseph Cottle,
a bookseller at Bristol, had purchased from him for the sum of
thirty guineas. Up to this time he had merely contributed
occasional poems to a London paper. In 1798 he contributed
his poem The Ancient Manner to Wordsworth's collection of
Lyrical Ballads, and in the same year he went for a while to
Germany to mature his studies in the history of literature.
On his return he went to live in the Lake District, near Words-
worth's home, thus becoming a member of what is known as
the Lake School of Poetry. In. 1804 and 1805 he acted as
secretary to Sir Alexander Ball in Malta, returning again to the
lakes, which he finally left in 1812, leaving his family to the
care of Southey. Thereafter he lived in London, and died at
Highgate, in the house of a Mr. Gillman, on the 25th of July,
1834.

Like many great literary geniuses, Coleridge had a weakness
which interfered in a great measure with the exercise of his
philosophic and poetical gifts. This weakness is thus described
by Mr. Scrymgeour :

* His habits of mind and business rendered his lectures and
his publications unprofitable to himself and disastrous to his
publishers. Opium-eating, into which he had been seduced
by its alleged medicinal effects, had gradually unhinged the
structure of his mind ; he became an exile from his family and
his dearest friends, and lived a species of haphazard life till he

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 407

had firmness enough to place himself, for the cure of his unfortu-
nate habit, under the charge of Mr. Gillman, surgeon, Highgate.
In the bosom of that gentleman's affectionate family he lived
till his death, delighting troops of admiring friends by the
miracles of his conversation. During this period his most
important works were published ; he was overcoming his in-
firmity ; his shattered nature was restored to a wholesome
religious tone ; his philosophy was tempering into tangibleness
and utility. . . . The great beauty of his mind, both in its
error and its orthodoxy, was its simplicity of religious earnest-
ness, and the single eye with which through much error it panted
after truth. His capital defect was want of energetic will,
which inflicted misery on his family, and on himself heart-
rending remorse.'

The works of Coleridge have been compared most aptly to
an unfinished city. Almost all his poems are fragmentary.
They are powerfully suggestive of the ' might have been.'
Magnificent incompleteness is the highest epithet which can
justly be used concerning them. Christabel, a lovely narrative
poem, is unfinished. The Ancient Mariner, accounted by some
critics the most splendid and complete of his essays in verse,
has been accused by others of furnishing an insufficient moral.
But his Hymn to Mont Blanc, his Odes, and other minor works,
are gems of their kind. The highest tribute which the historian
can pay to the genius of this truly great writer may be paid,
perhaps, in a mention of the fact that he was admired, and even
imitated, by Byron and Scott.

YOUTH AND AGE

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee —
Both were mine ! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young !
When I was young ? — Ah, woful when !
Ah ! for the change 'twixt Now and Then !
This breathing house not built with hands,

This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands

How lightly then it flash'd along :
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide !
Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.

408 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Flowers are lovely ; Love is flower-like ;

Friendship is a sheltering tree ;
O ! the joys, that came down shower-like

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old !

Ere I was old ? Ah, woful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here !
O Youth ! for years so many and sweet

'Tis known that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit —

It cannot be, that Thou art gone !

Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd : —
And thou wert aye a masker bold !
What strange disguise hast now put on.
To make believe that thou art gone ?
T see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this alter'd size :
But Springtide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes !
Life is but Thought : so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.

Dewdrops are the gems of morning,

But the tears of mournful eve !
Where no hope is, life's a warning

That only serves to make us grieve

When we are old :

— That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking-leave ;

Like some poor nigh-related guest,

That may not rudely be dismist,
Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile.

CHILD'S EVENING PRAYER

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,

God grant me grace my prayers to say !

O God, preserve my mother dear

In health and strength for many a year,

And oh, preserve my father too,

And may I pay him rev'rence due ;

And may I my best thoughts employ

To be my parents' hope and joy !

My sisters and my brothers both

From evil guard, and save from sloth,

And may we always love each other,

Our friends, our father, and our mother !

And still, O Lord, to me impart

A contrite, pure, and grateful heart,

That after my last sleep I may

Awake to Thy eternal day. Amen.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course ? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful Form !
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 409

How silently ! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge ! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity !

0 dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer,

1 worshipp'd the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet we know not we are list'ning to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused
Into the mighty vision passing — there,
As in her natural form swell' d vast to Heaven !
Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise
Thou owest ! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy ! Awake,
Voice of sweet song ! Awake, my heart, awake !
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn !

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale !
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink :
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald ! wake, oh wake, and utter praise !
Who sank thy simless pillars deep in earth ?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light ?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad !
Who call'd you forth from night and utter death
From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever ?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ?
And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ?

Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain —
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge !
Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts !
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen, full moon ? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who with living flowers,
Of loveliest hue, spread garlands at your feet !
God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God !
God ! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice !
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds !
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God !

Ye living flowers that skirt th' eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm !

4io A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds !

Ye signs and wonders of the element !

Utter forth ' God,' and fill the hills with praise !

Thou too, hoar Mount ! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast —
Thou too, again, stupendous Mountain ! thou,
That, as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me — rise, oh, ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth !
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God !

THE NIGHTINGALE

A melancholy bird ? Oh ! idle thought —
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of some grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love ;
(And so, poor wretch ! fill'd all things with himself,
And made all gentle sounds send back the tale
Of his own sorrow) ; he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain,
And many a poet echoes the conceit.
We have learnt

A different lore : we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance. 'Tis the merry nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,
With fast thick warble, his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music.

FROM ' FROST AT MIDNIGHT '

Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought !
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 411

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in Himself.
Great universal Teacher ! He shall mould
Thy spirit, and, by giving, make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eve-drops fall,
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

ROBERT SOUTHEY

1774-1843

THE number of volumes produced by Robert Southey can only
be described as prodigious. They numbered in all 109. But
even this fact in itself does not convey an adequate idea of the
labour involved in writing the books referred to. In calculating
that we must remember that they are all books which involved
laboured research. Many works would doubtless be consulted
before one of Southey's volumes could be produced. This prolific
writer was born in Wine Street, Bristol, on the I2th of August,
1774. His father was a linen draper in that city, but the future
poet spent a great portion of his childhood with the members
of his mother's family. After, passing through several local
schools, he was sent in 1788 to Westminster School at the expense
of his uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill. At that celebrated seat
of learning he lost some valuable time in a somewhat futile
endeavour to acquire a knowledge of classics, a branch of study
for the pursuit of which he had laid no proper foundation pre-
viously. Having spent four years there, he incurred the dis-
pleasure of the masters by writing in the school magazine (which
he and a friend had instituted) an offensive article denouncing
the system of flogging in public schools. For this indiscretion
he was very promptly expelled. Within the next twelve months

412 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

he went to Oxford, and matriculated at Balliol College. Here
he was not much more successful with his Latin and Greek than
he had been at school. Two years were spent at the University,
during which time he, if we may believe his own account of him-
self, only learned two things worth mentioning, namely, how to
row and how to swim. But during that time he made the
acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These two kindred
spirits, ' both smitten by the widening swell of the French
Revolution, rank republicans in political creed, and Unitarians
in religious profession, formed, in conjunction with others, the
wild American scheme ' to which reference is made in our sketch
of the career of Coleridge. Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell (also
a ' Pantisocrat ') married three sisters whom they had met at
Bristol. The support of the three ladies devolved very soon upon
Southey, Lovell having died, and Coleridge indulging too fre-
quently in absenteeism as far as his wife and family were con-
cerned. The American scheme fell through for want of funds,
an attempt on the part of Southey and Lovell to' raise the wind
by the sale of a volume of poems having proved unsuccessful.
This collection was published under the assumed names of Bion
and Moschus.

Southey had written a poem at Oxford which he called Joan
of Arc. He now sold it for fifty guineas to an obliging book-
seller of Bristol named Cottle, but it required some overhauling
before it could be considered ' up to publication standard/ and
while this was being done the young author was obliged to give
lectures on History at Bristol, in order to keep himself from
absolute want. But in spite of these efforts he was obliged to
return to his mother's house in 1795. His republican leanings
had also led him to write a somewhat seditious poem called
Wat Tyler, which, years afterwards, when he was Poet-Laureate,
a publisher issued in order to annoy him.

In 1795 he went to Lisbon with his uncle, who was chaplain
to the British Factory in that city. He remained there for six
months, after which he returned to London, and began to study
law at Gray's Inn. In 1800 he again visited Lisbon for a brief
sojourn with his uncle. Soon after his return he was appointed
private secretary to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, a
post worth £350 a year, but this he only held for six months.
He now devoted himself exclusively to literary work, settling

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 413

down at Greta Hall, near Keswick, in 1803. ' From being a
sceptic and a republican he became a firm believer in Christianity,
and a staunch supporter of the English Church and Constitution,
and many of his works and essays in the Quarterly Review were
written in defence of the doctrines and discipline of the Church.'

On the death of Pye, in 1813, Southey was appointed Poet-
Laureate, Sir Walter Scott having declined the honour. In
1821 he was honoured by the University of Oxford with the
degree of LL.D. Sir Robert Peel offered him a baronetcy,
which he declined, but he accepted at the hands of the Govern-
ment a pension of £300 a year. In 1839 ne entered a second
time into the bonds of matrimony, the lady of his choice this
time being the poetess Caroline Bowles, who was then fifty-two
years of age. She was just in time to act as his nurse, for his
health began soon to give way, physically and mentally. For
the last three years of his life his mind was a total blank, and he
breathed his last at Greta on the 2ist of March, 1843.

Joan of Arc was not ready for the press until 1795. It was
favourably received, in spite of its republican principles. It
certainly displays unquestionable genius in its workmanship.
Madoc appeared in 1805, though it had been written some years
previously. These two poems are written in blank verse. The
author seems to have set some value on Madoc as a specimen of
his poetic gift, for we are told that on it he is ' content to rest
his fame.' It is, a powerful and picturesque tale of a Welsh
prince of the twelfth century whom he represents as discovering
and conquering Mexico. Its wonders are fascinating but im-
probable. On the whole the poem is inferior in conception and
treatment to The Curse of Kehama, which is his finest production.
The latter, published in 1810, is a tale of Hindoo mythology.
Dr. Collier gives us the following account of its plot :

' In verse of most irregular music, but completely suited to
his fantastic theme, he leads to the terrestrial paradise — to the
realms below the sea — to the heaven of heavens, and, in a
sublime passage, through adamantine rock, lit with a furnace
glow, into Padalon, the Indian Hades. We follow the strange
career of Kehama, a Hindoo Rajah, who by penance and self-
inflicted torture raises himself to a level with Brahma and
Vishnu ; we suffer with the poor mortal, who is burdened with
the spell of a terrible curse laid on him by the enchanter, and we

414 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

rejoice in his final deliverance and restoration to his family.
Various Hindoo gods, a ghost, a benevolent spirit, and a woman,
who receives immortality at the end, are among the dramatis
•persona. Scenery and costume, situations and sentiments, are
alike in keeping with the Oriental nature of the work. But for
all its splendour and all its correctness as a work of art it is so
far removed from the world in which our sympathies lie that
few can fully appreciate this noble poem, and perhaps none can
return to it with never-wearied love, as to a play of Shakespeare
or a novel by Scott.'

Four years after the publication of Kehama Southey again
courted public favour by the production of Roderick, the Last of
the Goths. This powerful poem is written in blank verse, and
is not so extravagant in conception as Kehama. It deals with
the punishments which overtook the last Gothic King of Spain,
' whose vices, oppressions, and in particular an insult offered
to the virtue of Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, incited that
noble to betray his country to the Moors.' The Spaniards rose
in revolt against their Moslem oppressors, and the King, adopting
the disguise of a hermit, appears in many of the scenes, and
' his agonizing repentance for his past crimes, and humble trust
in the mercy of God, form the materials of the action.'

Southey was conscientious in the discharge of his duties as
Poet-Laureate, and his loyalty as expressed in his official writings
is in strong contrast to his previous revolutionary principles.
Like his friend Coleridge, he had laid aside his Jacobinism and
Socinianism with his youth. His smaller poems, such as Mary,
the Maid of the Inn, The Holly Tree, etc., exhibit every grace of
genuine and polished poetry. Thalaba, an important poem, is
spoken of very favourably by such critics as Shaw and
Chambers.

At his death Southey left behind him four children, and a
comfortable fortune amounting to £12,000.

Almost every critic dwells upon the obvious faults of his
poetry, though all acknowledge his originality and power of
delineation. From a multitude of expressions of mingled praise
and blame we venture to quote the following, which savours
strongly of absolute fairness :

' Southey shipwrecked his poetry on his scholarship ; he used
too much the " spectacles of books "; the gilding and regilding

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 415

of his eloquence fatigues with its splendour ; his greater poems
have no relief ; the mouth of his reader's mind is perpetually
crammed to choking; his words frequently serve rather as a
splendid case for a little thought than as a crystal lantern to
transmit the intellectual light in the tempered harmony of its
outline. His eloquence lies too often in the rhetoric of the
words merely ; any reader will be sensible of this who compares
Campbell's Dirge of Wallace with Southey's verses on a similar
subject. His characters have not sufficiently distinctive
features. In Madoc, except by names, the hearer could not
distinguish Welshmen from Americans ; or, in Roderick, Moors
from Spaniards. Notwithstanding these defects, the intellectual
wealth of Southey's mind, his graceful skill in gorgeous ornament,
the purity of his English style, and his sympathy with all that
is noble and virtuous in history and humanity, render him a
poet of great practical use to the student. ... It is only
among those whose attainments enable them to appreciate
him that Southey, so far as regards the mass of his poetry,
will be probably a favourite.'

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

It was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun ;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,
That he beside the rivulet,

In playing there, had found ;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by ;
And then the old man shook his head,

And with a natural sigh,
' 'Tis some poor fellow's skull,' said he,
' Who fell in the great victory.

' I find them in the garden, for

There's many here about,
And often when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out !
For many thousand men,' said he,
' Were slain in the great victory.'

416 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

' Now tell us what 'twas all about/

Young Peterkin he cries,
And little Wilhelmine looks up

With wonder-waiting eyes ;
' Now tell us all about the war,
And what they kill'd each other for.1

' It was the English,' Kaspar cried,
' That put the French to rout ;

But what they kill'd each other for,
I could not well make out.

But everybody said/ quoth he,

' That 'twas a famous victory.

' My father lived at Blenheim then,

Yon little stream hard by ;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground.

And he was forced to fly ;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

' With fire and sword the country round

Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
' And new-born baby, died.
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

' They say it was a shocking sight,

After the field was won ;
For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun ;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

' Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene.' —

' Why, 'twas a very wicked thing !'
Said little Wilhelmine.

' Nay — :nay — my li ttle girl/ quoth h

' It was a famous victory.

' And everybody praised the Duke

Who such a fight did win.
' But what good came of it at last ?'

Quoth little Peterkin.
' Why that I cannot tell/ said he,
' But 'twas a famous victory.'

THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE

' I know not whether it be worth reporting that there is in Cornwall,
near the parish of St. Neots, a well arched over with the robes of four
kinds of trees, withy, oak, elm, and ash, dedicated to St. Keyne. The
reported virtue of the water is this, that whether husband or wife come
first to drink thereof, they get the mastery thereby.' — FULLER.

A well there is in the west-country,

And a clearer one never was seen ;
There is not a wife in the west-country

But has heard of the well of St. Keyne

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 4*7

An oak and an elm tree stand beside,

And behind does an ash- tree grow,
And a willow from the bank above

Droops to the water below.

A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne ;

Joyfully he drew nigh ;
For from cock-crow he had been travelling,

And there was not a cloud in the sky.

He drank of the water so cool and clear, »

For thirsty and hot was he ; ^
And he sat down upon the bank,

Under the willow-tree.

There came a man from the house hard by,

At the well to fill his pail ;
On the well-side he rested it,

And he bade the stranger hail.

' Now art thou a bachelor, stranger ?' quoth he,

' For an if thou ha'st a wife,
The happiest draught thou hast drank this day

That ever thou didst in thy life.

' Or has thy good woman, if one thou hast,

Ever here in Cornwall been ?
For an if she have, I'll venture my life

She has drank of the Well of St. Keyne.'

' I have left a good woman who never was here,'

The stranger he made reply ;
' But that my draught should be better for that,

' I pray you answer me why.'

St. Keyne,' quoth the Cornishman, ' many a time

Drank of this crystal well,
And before the angel summon'd her
She laid on the water a spell.

' If the husband of this gifted well

Shall drink before his wife,
A happy man thenceforth is he,

For he shall be master for life.

' But if the wife should drink of it first,

God help the husband then !'
The stranger stoop'd to the Well of St. Keyne,

And drank of the watc:r again.

' You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes ?'

He to the Cornishman said ;
But the Cornishman smiled as the stranger spake,

And sheepishly shook his head.

' I hasten' d as soon as the wedding was done

And left my wife in the porch.
But i' faith she had been wiser than me,

For she took a bottle to church.'

27

418 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

THE FALLS OF LODORE
DESCRIBED IN 'RHYMES FOR THE NURSERY

' How does the Water

Come down at Lodore ?'

My little boy ask'd me

Thus, once on a time ;

And moreover he task'd me

To tell him in rhyme.

Anon at the word,

There first came one daughter

And then came another,

To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water

Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,

As many a time

They had seen it before.

So I told them in rhyme,

For of rhymes I had store :

And 'twas in my vocation

For their recreation
That so I should sing ;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.

From its sources which well
In the tarn on the fell ;
From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills ;
Through moss and through brake,

It runs and it creeps

For awhile, till it sleeps

In its own little Lake.

And thence at departing,

Awakening and starting.

It runs through the reeds

And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,

In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-skurry.
Here it comes sparkling,
And there it lies darkling ;
Now smoking and frothing
Its tumult and wrath in,
Till in this rapid race
On which it is bent,
It reaches the place
Of its steep descent.
The Cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war waging
Its caverns and rocks among :

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 419

Rising and leaping,

Sinking and creeping,

Swelling and sweeping,

Showering and springing,

Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,

Around and around

With endless rebound !

Smiting and fighting,

A sight to delight in ;

Confounding, astounding,

Dizzying" and deafening the ear with its sound.

Collecting, projecting,
Receding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining, '
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring and roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and going,
And running and stunning,
And foaming and roaming,
. And dinning and spinning,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And guggling and struggling,
And heaving and cleaving,
And moaning and groaning ;
And glittering and frittering,
And gathering and feathering,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hurrying and skurrying,
And thundering and floundering

Dividing and gliding and sliding,

And falling and brawling and sprawling,

And driving and riving and striving,

And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,

And sounding and bounding and rounding,

And bubbling and troubling and doubling,

And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,

And clattering and battering and shattering ;

Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,

27 — 2

420 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing ;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending.
All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar,
And this way the Water comes down at Lodore.

THE KING OF THE CROCODILES

The people at Isna, in Upper Egypt, have a superstition concerning
crocodiles similar to that entertained in the West Indies ; they say there
is a king of them, who resides near Isna, and who has ears, but no tail ;
and he possesses an uncommon regal quality — that of doing no harm.
Some are bold enough to assert that they have seen him.

' Now, woman, why without your veil ?
And wherefore do you look so pale ?
And, woman, why do you groan so sad,
And beat your breast, as you were mad ?'

' Oh ! I have lost my darling boy,

In whom my soul had all its joy ;

And I for sorrow have torn my veil,

And sorrow hath made my very heart pale.

' Oh ! I have lost my darling child,
And that's the loss that makes me wild ;
He stoop'd to the river down to drink,
And there was a crocodile by the brink.

' He did not venture in to swim,

He only stoop'd to drink at the brim ;

But under the reeds the crocodile lay,

And struck with his tail and swept him away.

' Now take me in your boat, I pray,
For down the river lies my way ;
And me to the reed-island bring.
For I will go to the crocodile king.

' The king of the crocodiles never does wrong —
He has no tail so stiff and strong,
He has no tail to strike and slay,
But he has ears to hear what I say.

' And to the king I will complain
How my poor child was wickedly slain ;
The king of the crocodiles he is good,
And I shall have the murderer's blood.'

The man replied, ' No, woman, no,
To the island of reeds I will not go ;
I would not, for any worldly thing,
See the face of the crocodile king.'

' Then lend me now your little boat,
And I will down the river float,
I tell thee that no worldly thing
Can keep me from the crocodile king.'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 421

The woman she leapt into the boat,
And down the river alone did she float,
And fast with the stream the boat proceeds,
And now she has come to the island of reeds.

The king of the crocodiles there was seen,

He sat upon the eggs of his queen,

And all around, a numerous rout,

The young prince crocodiles crawl'd about.

The woman shook every limb with fear,
As she to the crocodile king came near,
For never man without fear and awe
The face of his crocodile majesty saw.

She fell upon her bended knee,
And said, ' O king, have pity on me,
For I have lost my darling child,
And that's the loss that makes me wild.

' A crocodile ate him for his food,
Now let me have the murderer's blood,
Let me have vengeance for my boy,
The only thing that can give me joy.

' I know that you, sire ! never do wrong ;
You have no tail so stiff and strong,
You have no tail to strike and slay,
But you have ears to hear what I say.'

' You have done well,' the king replies,
And fix'd on her his little eyes ;
' Good woman, yes, you have done right,
But you have not described me quite.

' I have no tail to strike and slay,
And I have ears to hear what you say ;
I have teeth, moreover, as you may see,
And I will make a meal of thee.'

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

1775-1864

LANDOR often said of his own poetry that it was the work of an
amateur as compared with his prose, and certain critics have
taken him at his word. But even as a poet he must be accorded
a foremost place amongst the writers of his own day.

Walter Savage Landor was born on the 3oth of January, 1775.
He was the son of a gentleman holding a good position'amongst
the county families of Warwickshire. Walter was educated
at Rugby, and in due course proceeded to Trinity College,
Oxford. His first idea was to enter the army, but he abandoned
that project in favour of the legal profession. Changing his

422 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

mind with regard to this also, he left Oxford without taking
his degree. His father was good enough to supply him with
a regular and liberal allowance, which enabled him to plunge
at once into the pursuit of literary fame. He first published a
volume of poems in 1795. In Gebir he gave to the world ' a
noble narrative in stately blank verse,' consisting of 275 lines
arranged in seven ' books.' Of this work he says himself :
' When I began to write Gebir I had just read Pindar a second
time. What I admired was what nobody else had ever noticed —
his proud complacency and scornful strength ! If I could
resemble him in nothing else, I was resolved to be as compendious
and exclusive.' This work appeared in 1798. Mr. Forster, in
his biography of the poet, tells us that ' the intention of the poem
is, by means of Gebir and his brother Tamar, to rebuke the am-
bition of conquest, however excusable its origin, and to reward
the contests of peace, however at first unsuccessful. Gebir is
an Iberian Prince, Sovereign of Bceotic Spain, whose conquest of
Egypt, undertaken to avenge the wrongs and assert the claims
of his ancestors, is suspended through his love for its young
Queen Charoba, by the treachery of whose nurse he is never-
theless slain amid the rejoicings of his marriage feast. Tamar
is a shepherd youth, the keeper of his brother's herds and flocks,
by whom nothing is so much cherished as to ' conquer to his
love ' one of the sea-nymphs, whom at first he vainly contends
with, but who, made subject to mortal control by the superior
power of his brother, yields to the passion already inspired in
her, and carries Tamar to dwell with her beyond the reach of
human ambition.' It begins :

I sing the fates of Gebir. He hath dwelt
Among those mountain-caverns which retain
His labours yet, vast halls and flowing wells,
Nor have forgotten their old master's name
Though sever 'd from his people : here, incenst
By meditating on primeval wrongs,
He blew his battle-horn, at which uprose
Whole nations ; here, ten thousand of most might
He call'd aloud ; and soon Charoba saw
His dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile.

What should the virgin do ? should royal knees
Bend suppliant ? or defenceless hands engage
Men of gigantic force, gigantic arms ?
For 'twas reported that nor sword sufficed,
Nor shield immense nor coat of massive mail,
But that upon their towering heads they bore
Each a huge stone, refulgent as the stars.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 423

And so till the end it sustains its majestic march, closing with
these words :

'And weepest thou, Charoba ! shedding tears
More precious than the jewels that surround
The neck of kings entomb'd ! then weep, fair queen,
At once thy pity and thy pangs assuage.
Ah ! what is grandeur ? glory ? they are past !
When nothing else, not life itself, remains,
Still the fond mourner may be call'd our own.
Should I complain of Fortune ? how she errs,
Scattering her bounty upon barren ground,
Slow to allay the lingering thirst of toil ?
Fortune, 'tis true, may err, may hesitate,
Death follows close, nor hesitates, nor errs.
I feel the stroke ! I die !' He would extend
His dying arm : it fell upon his breast ;
Cold sweat and shivering ran o'er every limb,
His eyes grew stiff, he struggled, and expired.

Landor's father died in 1805, and the poet came into possession
of the family estates, but sold them in 1814, and went to Italy
where he lived until 1835, when he quarrelled with his wife,
and came back to England. For ten years, from 1820, he was
engaged in writing his greatest work, which is entitled Imaginary
Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen. He was extremely
proud of this work, not indeed without reason, but he has been
justly accused of arrogance for his expressed opinion of it.
' What I write,' he says, ' is not written on slate, and no finger,
not of Time himself, who dips it in the cloud of years, can efface
it.' Yet the words hardly state more than the truth. Besides
other works in prose, Landor also published poems entitled
respectively Count Julian, Heroic Idylls, and Hellenics. He
lived for twenty years at Bath, but died at Florence on the iyth of
September, 1864. He died ' under a cloud,' for he had been con-
demned to pay heavy damages for a libel on a lady before he left
his native country for the last time. A bust of the poet may
be seen in the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, Warwick.
Count Julian is a powerful tragedy in five acts. His description
of the Count is fairly typical of the style .of the whole poem :

Tank. At last

He must be happy : for delicious calm
Follows the fierce enjoyment of revenge.

Hernando. That calm was never his, no other will be.
Thou knowest not, and mayst thou never know,
How bitter is the tear that fiery shame
Scourges and tortures from the soldier's eye.
Whichever of these bad reports be true,
He hides it from all hearts to wring his own,

424 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And drags the heavy secret to the grave.
Not victory that o'ershadows him sees he ;
No airy and light passion stirs abroad
To ruffle or to soothe him ; all are quell'd
Beneath a mightier, sterner stress of mind ;
Wakeful he sits, and lonely, and unmoved,
Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men ;
As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray,
Stands solitary, stands immovable
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased,
In the cold light above the dews of morn.
He now assumes that quietness of soul
Which never but in danger have I seen
On his staid breast.

FROM THE 'HELLENICS'

We mind not how the sun in the mid-sky

Is hastening on ; but when the golden orb

Strikes the extreme of earth, and when the gulphs

Of air and ocean open to receive him,

Dampness and gloom invade us ; then we think

Ah ! thus it is with Youth. Too fast his feet

Run on for sight ; bright eyes bestar his couch

The cheerful horn awakens him ; the feast,

The revel, the entangling dance, allure,

And voices mellower than the Muse's own

Heave up his buoyant bosom on their wave.

A little while, and then — Ah, Youth ! Youth ! Youth

Listen not to my words — but stay with me !

When thou art gone, Life may go too ; the sigh

That rises is for thee, and not for Life.

LORD BYRON

1788-1824

BYRON, according to the brief mention which Dr. Craik affords
him in his able history of English literature and language, was
the writer whose blaze of popularity it mainly was that threw
Scott's name into the shade, and induced him to abandon verse.
To say even so much is to stamp the man of whom the words
are spoken as something of the nature of a transcendent genius.
And yet there will be found but few, if any, critics who will
dispute the attendant statement that there is nothing in Byron's
earlier poems at least which is comparable to the great passages
in those of Scott — to the Battle of Marmion, for instance, or

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 425

the raising of the clansmen by the fiery cross in the Lady of the
Lake, or many others that might be mentioned.

The star of George Gordon Noef Byron rose with a peculiar
and startling suddenness. In Don Juan he refers to himself
as ' the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme,' and the likeness
between the splendour and quickness of his rise and that of the
first Napoleon has before now been dwelt upon by his biographers.
' They were both,' says Mr. Shaw, ' in their respective depart-
ments, the offspring of revolution, and both, after reigning
with absolute power, for some time, were deposed from their
supremacy, though the reign of each will leave profound traces
in the history of the nineteenth century.' And even of the
history of the twentieth century the words will doubtless prove
to be true.

Byron was born in London in January, 1788. His father
is described as an unprincipled profligate, who ran through
his wife's private fortune, and died, leaving her and his only
child in a condition bordering upon absolute want. The widow,
who was a lady of illustrious lineage, and a Scottish heiress,
took her orphaned boy to a home of humble dimensions in Aber-
deen, and was for some years in possession of very few of the
most ordinary comforts of life. Mrs. Byron's temper was a
very violent one, and this fact, combined with the straitened
circumstances in which he was brought up in those early days,
rendered the lot of the future poet far from happy, and there
is no doubt that it was not without its lasting effect upon his
own temperament. He seems to have inherited from his mother
a somewhat morbid susceptibility, which the constant jarring
occasioned by her quickly varying moods tended rather to
increase than to lessen. When he was about ten years old the
death of his grand-uncle occurred, by which event George Byron
became the possessor of a peerage, the baronial residence known
as Newstead Abbey, near Nottingham, and a considerable
estate, though not without certain awkward encumbrances
which reduced the value of the rental. In addition to this good
fortune, Byron had already been endowed by Nature with a
very handsome presence, which was somewhat marred, however,
by a disfigurement in the shape of a deformed foot. This flaw
in an otherwise faultless exterior was a constant source of trouble
to him. Under the altered circumstances his mother was enabled

426 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

to send him to Harrow, and in 1805, at the age of seventeen, he
proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. ' Already the youth
of seventeen,' says Dr. Collier, ' thoroughly spoiled by his foolish
mother, who flung things at him one moment, and strained him
to her breast the next, had been neglecting his regular studies,
but eagerly devouring other books of every class and kind.
Oriental history seems early to have fascinated his taste, and
this early love gave its own 'Colouring to his chief poetical works.
Already, too, another love than that for books had been tinging
his spirit with its hues. The lame but handsome boy was only
fifteen when he met that Mary Chaworth whose coldness
towards him was the first rill of lasting bitterness that mingled
with the current of his life. The beautiful Dream, which we
find amongst his minor poems, tells the sad story of this boyish
love and its results.' The second verse runs thus :

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such.

* * * * *

These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing — the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself — but the boy gazed on her ;
And both were young, and one was beautiful :
And both were young, yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood ;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him. . . .
But she in these fond feelings had no share :
Her sighs were not for him : to her he was
Even as a brother — but no more ; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him ;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race. — It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not — and why ?
Time taught him a deep answer — when she loved
Another ; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

' Our union,' said Lord Byron in 1821, ' would have healed
feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers — it would have
joined lands, broad and rich — it would have joined at least one
heart and two persons not ill-matched in years (she is two years
my elder) — and — and — and — what has been the result ?'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 427

We pass on to the seventh verse of this melancholy poem.
This is the wail of it :

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love : — Oh ! she was changed
As by the sickness of the soul ; her mind
Had wander'd from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre but the look
Which is not of the earth ; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm ; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things ;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to her.
And this the world calls frenzy ; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift ;
What is it but the telescope of truth ?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real !

And then, the pathos of its last five lines !

My dream was past ; it had no further change.

It was of a strange order, that the doom

Of these two creatures should be thus traced out

Almost like a reality — the one

To end in madness — both in misery.

Jeffrey says of this poem that it is ' written with great beauty
and genius, but is extremely painful. We cannot maintain
our accustomed tone of levity, or even speak like calm literary
judges in the midst of these agonizing traces of a wounded and
distempered spirit. Even our admiration is swallowed up in
a most painful feeling of pity and wonder. It is impossible to
mistake these for fictitious sorrows conjured up for the purpose
of poetical effect. There is a dreadful tone of sincerity, and an
energy that cannot be counterfeited, in the expression of
wretchedness and alienation from human-kind which occurs in
every line of this poem.'

In speaking of this tender passage in the life of this great
poet, Mr. Moore says : ' The young lady herself combined with the
many worldly advantages which encircled her much personal
beauty and a disposition the most amiable and attaching.
Though already fully alive to her charms, it was at this period
(1804) "that the young poet seems to have drunk deepest of that
fascination whose effects were to be so lasting, six short weeks
which he passed in her company being sufficient to lay the founda-
tion of a feeling for all life. With the summer holidays ended

428 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

this dream of his youth. He saw Miss Chaworth once more in
the succeeding year, and took his last farewell of her on that
hill near Annesley which in The Dream he so happily describes
as " crowned with a peculiar diadem." In August, 1805, she
was married to John Musters, Esquire, and died at Wiverton
Hall in February, 1832, in consequence, it is believed, of the
alarm and danger to which she had been exposed during the sack
of Colwick Hall by a party of rioters from Nottingham. The
unfortunate lady had been in a feeble state of health for several
years, and she and her daughter were obliged to take shelter
from the violence of the mob in a shrubbery, to which she was
carried by her son William, and where, partly from cold, partly
from terror, her constitution sustained a shock which it wanted
vigour to resist.

It was in 1805 that Byron penned the well-known Fragment,
written shortly after the marriage of Miss Chaworth, which runs

as follows :

Hills of Annesley ! bleak and barren,

Where my thoughtless childhood stray'd,
How the northern tempests, warring,

Howl above thy tufted shade !

Now no more, the hours beguiling,

Former favourite haunts I see ;
Now no more my Mary smiling

Makes ye seem a heaven to me.

Lord Byron remained at Trinity College for two years. During
that period he made the friendship of a number of young men
of uncommon talent but sceptical tendencies. His buoyant
spirits and love of mischief, which gradually developed into a
settled recklessness and systematic defiance of the college
authorities, brought him into disfavour with his superiors.
He kept some ferocious bulldogs in his rooms, and a tame bear,
which it was his delight to introduce to visitors as ' in training
for a fellowship.' But of his four-footed pets his chief favourite
was a large Newfoundland dog, who was his constant companion
when indulging in his passion for boating. The epitaph which
may still be read on the monument of this dog at Newstead
Abbey affords a striking illustration of the misanthropic views
of the poet, who wrote it. The poem runs as follows :

When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rest below ;

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 429

When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,

Not what he was, but what he should have been ;

But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still his master's own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth :

While man, vain insect ! hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man ! thou feeble tenant of an hour,

Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,

Degraded mass of animated dust !

Thy love is 'lust, thy friendship all a cheat,

Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit !

By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame

Ye ! who perchance behold this simple urn,

Pass on — it honours none you wish to mourn :

To mark a friend's remains these stones arise ;

I never knew but one — and here he lies.'

During his leisure hours at Cambridge Byron was busy writing
verses, which he ventured to publish at Newark, in 1807, under
the title Hours of Idleness, by Lord Byron, a Minor. Boyish
verses these undoubtedly were, but quite up to the average of
such attempts. Within a short period after their appearance
they were violently attacked and torn to pieces by a writer in
the Edinburgh Review, who seems to have dipped his pen in
venom with a vengeance. It appeared as if the young poet
had not a leg to stand on. But he had. He sat down once
more, and wrote in venom himself this time, doubtless making
that man sorry he had spoken. A torrent of fierce and scathing
invective was the result. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
soon issued from the press, and in it was speedily recognised a
poem which plainly indicated the fact that the abused verses,
in spite of their boyishness, were ' but the languid recreations
of a man in whose hand, when roused to earnest work, the pen
became a tremendous and destructive weapon.' It begins :

Still must I hear ? — shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch reviews
Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my muse ?
Prepare for rhyme — I'll publish, right or wrong :
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

That these lines, and the long tirade of learned abuse which
followed them, were written in a fit of genuine rage can hardly

430 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

be questioned. Even when the offended poet was writing a
postscript to the second edition the fire seems to have been
still burning within his breast. ' What a pity it is,' he writes,
' that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus when the next number
(of the Edinburgh Review) has passed the Tweed ! But I yet
hope to light my pipe with it in Persia.' One feels that the words
of Thomas Carlyle, in his study of Happiness, are helpful in
the analysis of Byron's inner feeling on this occasion. ' A
gifted Byron,' says the Sage of Chelsea, ' rises in his wrath, and
feeling too surely that he for his part is not " happy," declares
the same in very violent language as a piece of news that may
be interesting. It evidently has surprised him much. One
dislikes to see a man and a poet reduced to proclaim on the
streets such tidings ; but on the whole, as matters go, this is
not the most dislikable. Byron speaks the truth in this matter.
Byron's large audience indicates how true it is felt to be.' And
again : ' Your very Byron, in these days, is at least driven mad ;
flatly refuses fealty to the world. The world with its injustices,
its golden brutalities, and dull yellow guineas, is a disgust to
such souls — the ray of Heaven that is in them does at least
predoom them to be very miserable here. Yes ; and all
this misery is faculty misdirected, strength that has not yet
found it sway. The black whirlwind is mother of the lightning.
No smoke, in any sense, but can become flame and radiance T
Such soul, once graduated in Heaven's stern University, steps
out superior to your guinea.' To this graduating in Heaven's
stern University we are perhaps mainly indebted for the stepping
out of that unquestionable genius which until then had but
glimmered in the breast of Byron. He was at once recognised
as a star of the first magnitude in the literary world. From
that moment he could wield his magic pen fearlessly, as he
liked. f

Byron spent the next two years touring through Spain and
Turkey. The fascinating beauties and historic interest of the
scenes through which he passed did not altogether serve to dispel
the gloom of disappointed love which had settled down upon his
heart. But he found consolation in that quick outburst of
poetical genius which gave the world the first two cantos of
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Though the poet himself steadily
pooh-poohed the idea, yet the reader cannot fail to identify

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 431

him with the hero of the poem — a misanthrope 'who had ex-
hausted in revelry and vice the power of enjoying life.' It is
no exaggeration to say that this instalment of the great poem
took the literary world by storm. The young man who had
been ' reviewed ' so mercilessly five years before now became
the idol of London society, and was lionized everywhere he went.
For three years he lived in London, and even took his seat in
the House of Lords, where he made three speeches, but these
did not evoke much enthusiasm in the political world.

At the end of this, period of intoxicating fame Byron married
Miss Milbanke, a lady of good family and great expectations.
But the union turned out unhappily. About a year of domestic
misery led to a climax in the shape of a separation. Lady Byron
was advised by her family and their lawyer to leave her husband,
though the public were never made acquainted with the exact
reason for this serious step. Even Lord Byron himself asserted
that he never knew the cause of it. For his supposed cruelty,
however, he was condemned by the press, and hissed in the streets,
and, in sheer disgust, he quitted England in 1816, never to look
upon her shores again. ' Restless and miserable years they
were that filled up the alloted span of poor Byron's life. He
passed — a lonely wanderer, with many a poisoned arrow rankling
in his memory and heart — over the blood-stained ground of
Waterloo, amid the snowy summits of the Jura, echoing with
frequent thunder, into the beautiful Italian land, to find in the
faded palaces of Venice and the mouldering columns of Rome
fit emblems of his own ruined life, but, alas ! not to read
these lessons of the dead past with a softening and repentant
soul. At Venice, at Ravenna, at Pisa, and at Rome, he lived
a wicked and most irregular life, writing many poems, for which
he received many thousand pounds, but descending, as he sank
morally, into a fitful and frequently morbid style, too often
poisoned with reckless blasphemy and unconcealed licentious-
ness.'

We will spare the reader further details of the private life of
this brilliant but misguided poet. Suffice it to say that in 1823
he decided to throw in his lot with the Greeks, who were then
making a fierce struggle for independence. Embarking at
Leghorn, he landed in Cephalonia, and went on to Missolonghi.
Here he devoted himself with dauntless courage and untiring

432 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

energy to the cause which he had adopted. During some months
he rendered much practical help to the troubled country, and
was eagerly looking forward to leading an attack on Lepanto,
when the terrible marsh fever of the place laid its hand upon his
already wasted frame, and he died on the igth of April, 1824,
at the early age of thirty-six. Three days afterwards his
warlike Suliotes stood mourning round his bier, listening to
the funeral service. The body was brought to England, and
buried in the family tomb at Hucknall, near Newstead. An
application was made for permission to bury his remains in
Westminster Abbey, but this honour was refused by the authori-
ties on account of the opinions and manner of life of the
poet.

Besides the works already mentioned, Byron published
The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos in 1813, and The Corsair
and Lara in 1814. By 1819 he had added to these The Siege of
Corinth, Manfred, The Prisoner of Chillon, and the completing
cantos of Childe Harold. Beppo, which appeared in 1818, was
written in a new style, which was more fully developed in Don
Juan, which appeared in instalments between 1819 and 1823.
A number of dramas were also amongst his minor efforts. The
circulation of these works was in some cases quite enormous.
He himself boasts that of The Corsair 14,000 copies were sold
in one day. The sums he received for his poems amounted,
according to his publisher, Mr. Murray, to £15,000.

The greater poems of Lord Byron are so well known, and so
easily obtained, that a few passing comments may suffice with
regard to their general character. The plan of Childe Harold
has been called an anomaly in poetical science, but its effect is
acknowledged to be magnificent — a panoramic view of scenes,
persons, and events which form the beacon towers on the ocean
of time. It is quite evident that the poet threw his whole heart
into the construction and embellishing of it, though his dark
spirit also overshadows it with its wings.

' As he grew in power,' says Mr. Stopford Brooke, ' he escaped
from his morbid self, and ran into the opposite extreme in Don
Juan. It is chiefly in it that he shows the influence of the
revolutionary spirit. It is written in bold revolt against all
the conventionality of social morality and religion and politics.
It claimed for himself and for others absolute freedom of indi-

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 433

vidual act and thought in opposition to that force of society
which tends to make all men of one pattern.'

Some of his finest and most poetical passages are to be found
in his Tales, and yet, with the exception of The Prisoner of
Chilian and Parisina, they do not rise so often as his greater
poems into that charm of imagery, suggested by Nature at her
best and loveliest, which shines forth in almost every canto
of Childe Harold. Though by no means perfect in every detail,
Manfred is perhaps the poem which gives one the most complete
example of his poetical temperament. Of the Tragedies it has
been said with truth that, though they are not worthy of the poet,
they of all his works do most honour to the man.

Thomas Moore, in his exhaustive biography of the poet, has
withdrawn the veil of mystery in which Lord Byron loved to
shroud himself, and consequently much of the romantic interest
that was associated with his name has disappeared. The series
of his letters, and his diary, exhibit anything but a mind tortured
amidst the storms of an unhappy idiosyncrasy. His contempt
of the world and of mankind culminates in an almost cringing
anxiety as to the world's opinions, and an all but avowed longing
for popularity. Even his scepticism is lacking in principle, as
must always be the case where the sceptic is content to doubt
without examining, and to judge without sifting the evidence.
One of his many biographers has thus ventured to sum up the
circumstances which led to the evolution of Lord Byron's genius :
' An extremely irregular education (despite the almost startling
list of books which, according to Mr. Moore, he had read before
he was half-way out of his teens) ; the injudicious moral manage-
ment of a parent utterly incapable of directing aright even a
common mind ; a selfishness and obstinacy of purpose existing
singularly in a soul theoretically alive to every generous and noble
impulse, and who has quoted of himself the words of Ovid :

' " Video meliora proboque
Deteriora sequor."

Add to these circumstances passions and emotions, good and
evil, as excitable and capricious in their wayward variation as
the ocean waters ; an intellect of great power, but of power
exhibited remarkably only when electrified by the touch of
imagination, and a consequent false philosophy of men and
things.'

28

434 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'CHILDE HAROLD'

CANTO IV
THE CATARACT OF VELINO

The roar of waters ! — from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice ;
The fall of waters ! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ;
The hell of waters ! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture ; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald : — how profound
The gulf ! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings through the vale : — Look back
Lo ! where it comes like an eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread — a matchless cataract,

Horribly beautiful ! but on the verge.
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn :
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

AN EVENING SCENE IN ITALY

The moon is up, and yet it is not night —
Sunset divides the sky with her — a sea
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains ; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,
Where the Day joins the past Eternity ;
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest !

GREATER VPOETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 435

A single star is at her side, and reigns
With her o'er half the lovely heaven ; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill,
As Day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaim'd her order : — gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows,

Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar.
Comes down upon the waters ; all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse :
And now they change ; a paler shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains ; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till — 'tis gone — and all is gray.

ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll !
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control
Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remair
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields
Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise
And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth : — there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war ;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

28—2

436 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee —
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage ; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts : — not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play —
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow —
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time,
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime —
The image of Eternity — the throne
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean ! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward : from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers — they to me
Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here.

THE GLADIATOR

I see before me the Gladiator lie :
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low —
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now
The arena swims around him — he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away :
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at phiy,
There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday —
All this rush'd with his blood — Shall he expire
And unavenged ? — Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire !

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA1

Though the day of my destiny's over,

And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find ;

1 The poet's sister, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 437

Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted

It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is smiling,

The la.st smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine ;
And when winds are at war with the ocea,n,

As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,

And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain — it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me ;

They may crush, but they shall not contemn —
They may torture, but shall not subdue me —

'Tis of thee that I think — not of them.

Though human, thou did'st not deceive me,

Though woman, thou did'st not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake, —
Though trusted, thou did'st not disclaim me,

Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,

Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

Nor the war of the many with one —
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

"Twas folly not sooner to shun :
And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foreset .
I have found that, whatever it lost me.

It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,

Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'

Deserved to be dearest of all :
In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitud-e singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

July 24, 1816.

FROM 'HEBREW MELODIES'
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea.
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green.
That host with their banners at sunset were seen :
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay wither' d and strown.

438 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd ;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heav'd and for ever grew still !

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride ;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail ;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord !

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

1792-1822

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was a son of Sir Timothy Shelley,
Baronet, and was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex,
in the year 1792. He is said to have been, from his childhood,
of a distinctly morbid turn of mind. He was educated at Eton,
and during his schooldays was a diligent student of romance,
which he turned to account by writing two novels before he was
out of his teens. A youth of tender feeling, he was greatly dis-
turbed in mind by the system of bullying which was in vogue
in his school, and had imbibed a spirit of misanthropy before he
left for the University. He matriculated at Oxford, where he
spent much of his time in reading works which influenced the
student in the direction of scepticism and ' free thought.' To
such an extent did he pursue this line of false reasoning, that he
became saturated with an aversion to anything which savoured
of Christian sentiment. Moreover, he was so conscientious
withal that he thought it would be dishonourable to conceal
his thoughts, and thus deny his fellow-men the benefit of their
helpfulness. So he published a tract which, though anonymous,
set forth his convictions fully and clearly. But the college Dons
got wind of the matter somehow, and took him to task severely.
He prevaricated, or at least refused either to affirm or deny his

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 439

connection with the obnoxious thing. As a consequence, he was
dismissed from the University.

This opening of a brilliant, though brief, career would have
been sufficiently sad in itself without the addition of another
misdemeanour. But the second stage was worthy of the first.
The poet married beneath him, and after three years of wedded
happiness, he basely deserted his wife, and formed an intrigue
with the daughter of William Godwin, the novelist. His lawful
wife ended her misery by committing suicide. These youthful
escapades, to call them by a mild name, caused a very natural
estrangement between the poet and his father, who forbade him
to darken his doors again. The marriage took place in 1811,
and the separation in 1814.

During this period Shelley had been devoting himself to the
composition of verses, and to a closer study of philosophy and
metaphysics. In 1814 he went for a tour in France, and in
1815 his father seems to have relented somewhat, for on in-
heriting the family honours, he allowed the young poet an
increase of pocket-money. He returned to London for awhile,
and went on the Continent again in 1816. In Switzerland he
encountered Lord Byron, with whom he struck up a close and
interesting friendship. Byron's temperament was not one to be
offended by the loose ideas which clouded the brilliance of
Shelley's eloquence, and it will perhaps never be known exactly
how much one of these two great writers was influenced by the
other, so strong was the fascination of each. In September,
1816, Shelley came back to England, lived at Bath for a few
months, and settled down at Marlow-on-Thames, until Feb-
ruary, 1818. At this time his mind was still further embittered
against social stringencies by a decision of the Court of Chancery
which deprived him of the guardianship of his children.

' This has been stigmatized by Shelley's admirers,' says Mr.
Shaw, ' as an act of odious bigotry ; but it should be recollected
that his wife's father would naturally refuse to surrender his
grandchildren to a man who had been guilty of a great and cruel
wrong against his family, and who proclaimed the intention of
educating the children in irreligious opinions.'

Shelley's health beginning to give way in 1818, he went again
to the Continent, where he once more encountered Byron. This
time he travelled through the enchantments of Italian scenery,

440 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

pouring forth in uninterrupted profusion as he went the brilliant
poems which have made his name and talent famous for all time,
His end came with tragic and pathetic suddenness. While
yachting with a friend and one boatman in the Gulf of Spezzia
on the 8th of July, 1822, the little vessel was struck by a squall
and foundered with ' all hands.' A few days afterwards the sea
gave up her dead, and the youthful poet was cremated by his
two friends, Byron and Leigh Hunt. His remains were subse-
quently taken to Rome, and interred in the beautiful Protestant
cemetery near the grave of Caius Cestius. His heart, which was
deposited with his ashes, is said to have remained unconsumed.
' Notwithstanding the lawlessness and even licentiousness of
his political, religious, and social systems, few have lived more
morally pure than this unfortunate poet. He was, moreover,
gentle, affectionate, and remarkable for his liberal beneficence
to distress in every shape. But as God has appointed that we
cannot transgress a physical or a moral law without drawing
down its social punishment, even in this world, and, it may be,
transmitting it to our descendants, so it would seem as if this
ordinance extended to intellectual laws ; the formation and the
promulgation of a false and detestable philosophy, however pure
and even honourable were the poet's motives, proved the curse
of Shelley's life. It is sad to reflect that a spirit gifted with all
the most beautiful susceptibilities of humanity, " interpene-
trated " (to use one of his many coinages) with the multi-
tudinous beauty and harmony of nature — strong, intellectually,
to grasp the universe — pure, as unaided man is pure in motive —
and clear, in the same sense, from active vice — was yet not pro-
tected from the glittering seductions of vanity and presumption,
but proudly confident, walked, like a beautiful demon, in mystic
paths, " where angels fear to tread." In spite of the intensity
of its beauty and feeling, in spite of its far-reaching sublimity of
intellectual grandeur, of its gorgeous pomp of many-coloured
learning, we shrink from the poetry of Shelley like something
that our " nature's chilled at." Yet who can restrain admira-
tion of the exhaustless wealth of his mind ? His images stream
like the opal-hued abundance of a sunny waterfall, breaking in
music on each other to catch the eye in renovated forms, while
it can scarce mark the point whence one sprang from the other.
The music of his verse is subtle, intricate, and varied, " in linked

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 441

sweetness long drawn out," like the strain heard by the " Ancient

Mariner ":

' Now it is like all instruments,
Now like a lonely lute.'

i

Queen Mob was the first of Shelley's poems to attract public
attention. His fame was not firmly established, however, until
the appearance of Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude, a realty great
poem whose aim is to portray the feelings and sentiments of a
being of high aspirations and noble purposes who is nevertheless
misunderstood by his fellow-creatures, and takes refuge in re-
tirement from the baseness of the world. It is written in blank
verse, and was issued in 1816.

The Revolt of Islam followed in 1817. The poet himself says
of it : ' I have chosen a story of human passion in its most
universal character, diversified with moving and romantic
adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions
or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human
breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives
which I would substitute for those at present governing man-
kind by methodical and systematic argument. I would only
awaken the feelings so that the reader would see the beauty of
true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to
my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest
intellects of the world.'

He claims for the poem that it is therefore narrative, and not
didactic. In the preface from which the above words are taken
the poet very strongly avows his contempt for critics and their
criticisms. ' I have sought to write, as I believe that Homer,
Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, in utter disregard of anonymous
censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation,
though it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my peace.
I shall understand the expressive silence of those sagacious
enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. ... If
certain critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how
great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent
writings ! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be
amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives.'

And so on. Such a tirade furnishes the reader with its own
comment on the spirit in which it was written. And what of
the poem itself ? It is a work of unquestionable genius, but

442 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

very questionable usefulness, if indeed there can be any question
as to the inutility of holding up to superb ridicule such institu-
tions as marriage, monarchy, and even religion itself.

Prometheus Unbound was written in 1819. The author claims
for it the distinction of being imbued with imagery which is
drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those
external actions by which they are expressed. This, he says, is
unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare
are full of instances of the same kind — Dante, indeed, more
than any other poet, and with greater success. The poem
was ' chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths
of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odorif-
erous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever-widening
labyrinths upon the immense platforms and dizzy arches sus-
pended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect
of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and
the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxica-
tion, were the inspiration of this drama.' It is one of his greatest
works, and gives full evidence of that strangely anomalous feel-
ing of emotions which hold perpetual conflict with one another
in the breast of this strange poet, chief amongst which are a pro-
found antagonism to the laws of society and a magnanimous
love for his fellow-men.

Of the very numerous works of Shelley, we may also notice
Hellas, a liberal-minded lyrical drama dealing with the struggle
of the Greeks for independence. ' We are all Greeks/ he says,
as he exclaims at the apathy of the rulers of the civilized world
to the descendants of that nation to which they owe their
civilization. ' Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts,
have their root in Greece. But for Greece we might still have
been savages and idolaters, or, what is worse, might have
arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institu-
tions as China and Japan possess.

^

I hear ! I hear

The hiss as of a rushing wind,
The roar as of an ocean foaming,
The thunder as of earthquake coming.

I hear ! I hear !

The crash as of an empire falling.
The shrieks as of a people calling
Mercy ! mercy ! — How they thrill !
Then'a shout of ' Kill ! kill ! kill !'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 443

And thus, at the end :

O cease ! must hate and death return ?

Cease ! must men kill and die ?
Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn

Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
O might it die or rest at last !

The Cenci is another drama, written in 1819, the same year as
Prometheus. It is in five acts. It deals with the Italian story
of Beatrice di Cenci, ' a subject not to be mentioned in Italian
society without awakening a deep and breathless interest.' The
lady was the daughter of an atrociously wicked count :

That wretched Beatrice

Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
From hall to hall by the entangled hair.

She hires murderers to put him to death, and is executed at
Rome for her crime. The tragedy is strongly suggestive of
Macbeth in parts, and the manner would not be unworthy of
Shakespeare.

In Rosalind and Helen the poet inveighs against the stringent
laws which have constituted the bonds of wedlock more relent-
less than he could wish. In Adonais he mourns for Keats, whose
early death brought a brilliant career to an untimely end, to
the inestimable loss of the literary world. Of his lesser poems,
none is more fully charged with poetic charm and natural sweet-
ness than his Ode to a Skylark, which will be known as a perfect
thing wherever, and as long as, the lingual music of poetry may
gladden heart and ear.

In the Preface to Prometheus Unbound the author indulges in
observations on poetry which in a measure help the student of
his works to read this poet's methods and motives with a clearer
intelligence. He seems to fear the possible taunt of imitation
or plagiarism, which in his case he would excuse rather than
repudiate.

' As to imitation,' he says, ' poetry is a mimetic art. It
creates, but it creates by combination and representation.
Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the
portions of which they are composed had no previous existence
in the mind of man, or in nature, but because the whole produced
by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy
with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the con-

444 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

temporary condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece
of nature, while another not only ought to study, but must study.
... A poet is the combined product of such internal powers
as modify the nature of others ; and of such external influences
as excite and sustain those powers ; he is not one, but both.
. . . Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors,
and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and in another
the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do
not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod,
between ^Eschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace,
between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher,
between Dryden and Pope. Each has a generic resemblance
under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this
similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that
I have imitated.'

TO WORDSWORTH

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

That things depart which never may return ;

Childhood and youth, friendship, and love's first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine,

Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore

Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar ;

Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battling multitude ;

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus, having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

TO A SKYLARK

Hail to thee, blithe spirit !

Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springes t
Like a cloud of fire ;

The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run ;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 445

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight ;
Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not ;

What is most like thee ?
From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not :

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower :

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view :

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves :

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine :
I have never heard,

Praise of love or wine,
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

446 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,
Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain ?
What fields, or waves, or mountains ?

What shapes of sky or plain ?
What love of thine own kind ? What ignorance of pain ?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be :
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee :
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ?

We look before and after

And pine for what is not ;
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught ;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear ;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever could come near.

Better than all measures

Of delight and sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground !

Teach me half the gladness

That my brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as 1 am listening now.

THE CLOUD

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams ;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet birds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 447

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under ;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast ;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white.

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,

Lightning, my pilot, sits ;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits ;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea ;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains ;
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,

While he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead.
As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings.
An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings ;
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest.

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor.

By the midnight breezes strewn ;
And wherever the beat of. her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear.
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer ;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds mv bnnaer unfurl.

448 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow :
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water.

And the nursling of the sky ;
I pass through the pores of the" ocean and shores ;

I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD, LECHDALE
GLOUCESTERSHIRE

The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere

Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray ;

And pallid evening twines its beaming hair"

In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day ;

Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles,
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obey'st in silence their sweet solemn spells,
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire.
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres ;
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their worthy beds all living things around,
And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild

And terrorless as this serenest night :

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child

Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 449

JOHN KEATS

1795-1821

KEATS has been called the Poet of Beauty. W. M. Rossetti
says of him : ' The poet of youthfulness, he was privileged to
become and to remain enduringly the poet of rapt expectation
and passionate delight.'

This great poet was born in Moorfields, London, in 1795, and
was bound as apprentice to a surgeon when he was only fifteen
years of age. He had a constitutional tendency to consump-
tion, and his physical strength is said to have been still further
undermined by constant attention to an invalid brother. He
died in Rome on the 23rd of February, 1821, at the early age of
twenty-five. During his apprenticeship he spent the greater
part of his leisure in writing poetry, and his first volume was
issued in 1817. In the following year he published Endymion,
which is the longest of his poems. This work was savagely
attacked by the Quarterly Review, and the poet felt the severity
of the criticism very keenly, though there can be but little
doubt that some historians have gone too far in attributing his
death to the attack. The poem has much that is beautiful to
commend it, but it is by no means the poet's masterpiece.
Shelley gives it but faint praise. He says : ' I have read Keats'
poem. Much praise is due to me for having read it, the author's
intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to
the end of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and finest
gleams of poetry. I think if he had printed about fifty pages
of fragments from it I should have been tempted to admire
Keats as a poet more than I ought, of which there is now no
danger.' In his preface to the poem Keats says : ' I hope I
have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of
Greece and dulled its brightness ; for I wish to try once more,
before I bid it farewell.'

In 1820 Keats published a volume which contained The Eve
of St. Agnes, Isabella, Lamia, Hyperion, and several beautiful
odes.

The Eve of St. Agnes was written in 1819. It is based upon a
pretty and quaint superstition to the effect that on the eve of
St. Agnes's Day, January 21, maidens who go supperless to bed,

29

450 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

if they undress without looking backwards or aside, and pray
for a sight of their lovers, will be permitted to see them in their
dreams, and receive their homage and adoration. The poem is
sweetness itself. Romance, imagination, beauty, all the virtues
of poesy throb in every line, while the cadences and ' har-
monious movements ' are faultless. It is written in the
Spenserian stanza.

Isabella, a poem in the eight-line stanza, is a love-story, the
original of which is to be found in the Decameron of Boccaccio,
where it is placed in the mouth of Philomena. Keats has given
it a Northern setting by changing the scene from Messina to
Florence. It was written when the poet was twenty-three, and
is said to be an improvement on the original.

Lamia, which is one of the poet's best compositions, is based
upon the theory that it is possible for a man to love a dream-
maiden, and is written in the heroic couplet. It ' tells the story
of the serpent-lady, 'who loves a youth of Corinth, and who
cherishes him in the enchanted palace which she has built for
him, until the cold scrutiny of the philosopher compels her to
resume her serpent form.'

Of all the poems of Keats, perhaps the most popular, and
certainly the best known, is his exquisite Ode to a Nightingale.
It is one of the finest things in the whole range of English poetry.
Mr. Palgrave says : ' It is one of the six or eight amongst his
poems so unique and perfect in style that it is hard to see how
any experience could have made them better.'

Lord Byron was evidently one of those who attributed the
death of Keats to the severity of the criticism to which his work
was subjected, for in July, ij^i, he wrote the following little
epitaph in memory of the deceased poet :

' Who killed John Keats ? '

' I,' says the Quarterly,

So savage and tartarly ;
' 'Twas one of my feats.'

' Who shot the arrow ? '
' The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),-
Or Southey, or Barrow.'

In prose he refers to Keats as ' a young person learning to
write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art.' But after the

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 451

young person's death the greater poet seems to have softened a
little. He writes :

' Mr. Keats died at Rome ... of a decline produced by his
having burst a blood-vessel on reading the article on hisEndymion
in the Quarterly Review. I have read the article before and since,
and although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit
himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what
he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious
of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats' denunciation of
Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genius,
which, malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was un-
doubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems
actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as /Eschylus.
He is a loss to our literature, and the more so as he himself,
before his death, was said to have been persuaded that he had
not taken the right line, and was reforming his style on the more
classical models of the language.'

It is amusing, as it is pathetic, to find the author of English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers moralizing thus on the folly of being
hurt by criticism. But there will be few, if any, who will not
agree with him in saying that the early death of Keats involved
a grievous loss to the poetical literature of the world.

FROM 'HYPERION'
SATURN AND THE A

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,

Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,

Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,

Still as the silence round-about his lair ;

Forest on forest hung about his head

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on a summer's day

Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more

By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds

Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin sand large footmarks went
No further than to where his feet had strayed,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ;

29 — 2

452 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

While his bowed head seemed listening to the earth

His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seemed no force could wake him from his place ;

But there came one, who with a kindred hand

Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low

With reverence, though to one who knew it not.

She was a goddess of the infant world ;

By her in stature the tall Amazon

Had stood a pigmy's height : she would have ta'en

Achilles by the hair, and bent his neck ;

Or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel.

Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,

Pedestalled haply in a palace court,

When sages looked to Egypt for their lore.

But oh ! how unlike marble was that face !

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made

Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self !

There was a listening fear in her regard,

As if calamity had but begun ;

As if the vanward clouds of evil days .

Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear

Was, with its stored thunder, labouring up.

One hand she pressed upon that aching spot

Where beats the human heart, as if just there,

Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain ;

The other upon Saturn's bended neck

She laid, and to the level of his ear

Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake

In solemn tenor and deep organ tone ;

Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue

Would come in these like accents — oh ! how frail,
To that large utterance of the early gods ! —

' Saturn, look up ! though wherefore, poor old king ?

I cannot say, " O wherefore sleepest thou ?"

For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth

Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a god ;

And ocean, too, with all its solemn noise,

Has from thy sceptre passed, and all the air

Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.

Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,

Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house ;

And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands

Scorches and burns our once serene domain.

O aching time ! O moments big as years !

All, as ye pass, swell out the monstrous truth,

And press it so upon our weary griefs

That unbelief has not a space to breathe.

Saturn, sleep on ! Oh, thoughtless, why did I

Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude ?

Why should I ope my melancholy eyes ?

Saturn, sleep on ! while at thy feet I weep.'

As when, upon a tranced summer night,
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave ;
So came these words and went.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 453

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ;

Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne :

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold •
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez — when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

ODE ON THE POETS

Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Ye have left your souls on earth !
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new ?
— Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon ;
With the noise of fountains wonderous
And the parle of voices thunderous ;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns ;
Underneath large bluebells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And, the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not ;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth ;
Philosophic numbers smooth ;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again ;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us, here, the way to find you
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumber'd, never cloying.
Here, your earth-born souls still speak
To mortals, of their little week ;
Of their sorrows and delights ;
Of their passions and their spites ;
Of their glory and their shame ;
What doth strengthen and what maim
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

454 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Ye have left your souls on earth !
Ye have souls in heaven too.
Double-lived in regions new !

ODE TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness !

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run ;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees.

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease ;

For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers ;
And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook ;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ?

Think not of them — thou hast thy music too,

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft,

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn

Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft,

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter from the skies.

THE HUMAN SEASONS

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year ;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man :
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span :

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven : quiet coves

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 455

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close ; contented so to look
On mists in idleness — to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook : —

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

. MRS. HEMANS
1793-1835

FELICIA DOROTHEA BROWNE was born at Liverpool in the year
1793. In her childhood she lived amid the picturesque and
inspiring scenery of North Wales, near ,to Abergele. She was
not yet out of her teens when, in 1812, she published a volume
of poems entitled Domestic Affections. She was fortunate in
obtaining prizes for her poems, amongst her successes being a
prize for the best poem on Wallace in 1819, and in 1821 her verses
on Dartmoor secured another award. She was married in 1812
to Captain Hemans, and has made that name famous in the
history of literature by her graceful and tuneful writings. She
does not rank as a poetess of the first order, and is most successful
in her minor poems, all of which have a certain meed of sweetness. .
They are distinguished by affection and devotion, warmth and
delicacy of feeling, an insight into the deeper teachings of nature,
and other good qualities. But she has, perhaps, overdone it
in a measure. Scott accuses her of having ' too much flower for
the fruit,' and her poems have also been said to ' become languid
and fatiguing from their very uniformity of sweetness.' Her
larger works are The Sceptic, The Vespers of Palermo, The Forest
Sanctuary, and Records of Women. Her marriage was not a
happy one. Her husband broke down in health, and left her,
after six years of domestic infelicity. He went to Italy, and she
never saw him again. The latter portion of Mrs. Hemans' life
was spent in Dublin, where, in 1834, she published her Hymns
for Childhood, and Scenes and Hymns of Life. Her style has been
greatly admired in America, and much recent American verse
is moulded on it. She died in Dublin on the i6th of May, 1835.
The Forest Sanctuary is her best poem, but ' to name those lyrics

456 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

and shorter poems from her pen, which live in the memory like
favourite tunes, would be an endless task.' But such are The
Graves of a Household and The Voice of Spring.

SWISS SONG OF THE ALPS
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF AN ANCIENT BATTLE

The Swiss, even to our days, have continued to celebrate the anni-
versaries of their ancient battles with much solemnity, assembling in
the open air on the fields where their ancestors fought, to hear thanks-
givings offered up by the priests, and the names of all who shared in the
glory of the day enumerated. They afterwards walk in procession to
chapels, always erected in the vicinity of such scenes, where masses are
sung for the souls of the departed. (See Planta's History of the Helvetic
Confederacy.)

Look on the white Alps round !

If yet they gird a land
Where freedom's voice and step are found,

Forget ye not the band,
The faithful band, our sires, who fell
Here, in the narrow battle dell !

If yet, the wilds among,

Our silent hearts may burn,
When the deep mountain-horn hath rung,

And home our steps may turn, —
Home ! — home ! — if still that name be dear,
Praise to the men who perished here !

Look on the white Alps round !

Up to their shining snows
That day the stormy rolling sound,

The sound of battle, rose !
Their caves prolonged the trumpet's blast,
Their dark pines trembled as it passed !

They saw the princely crest

They saw the knightly spear,
The banner and the mail-clad breast
Borne down, and trampled here !
They saw — and glorying there they stand.
Eternal records to the land.

Praise to the mountain-born,

The brethren of the glen !
By them no steel array was worn,

They stood as peasant-men !
They left the vineyard and the field,
To break an empire's lance and shield ;

Look on the white Alps round !

If yet, along their steeps,
Our children's fearless feet may bound,

Free as the chamois leaps :
Teach them in song to bless the band
Amidst whose mossy graves we stand !

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 457

If, by the wood-fire's blaze,

When winter stars gleam cold,
The glorious tales of elder days

May proudly yet be told,
Forget not then the shepherd-race,
Who made the hearth a holy place !

Look on the white Alps round !

If yet the Sabbath-bell
Comes o'er them with a gladdening sound.

Think on the battle dell !
For blood first bathed its flowery sod,
That chainless hearts might worship God !

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND

Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land ? — Marmion.

The stately homes of England !

How beautiful they stand,
Amidst their tall ancestral trees.

O'er all the pleasant land !
The deer across their greensward bound,

Through shade and sunny gleam ;
And the swan glides past them with the sound

Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry homes of England !

Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love

Meet in the ruddy light !
There woman's voice flows forth in song,

Or childhood's tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along

Some glorious page of old.

The blessed homes of England !

How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness

That breathes from Sabbath-hours !
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime

Floats through their woods at morn ;
All other sounds, in that still time,

Of breeze and leaf are born.

The cottage homes of England !

By thousands on her plains,
Th'ey are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,

And round the hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,

Each from its nook of leaves ;
And fearless there the lowly sleep,

As the bird beneath their eaves.

The free fair homes of England !

Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be reared

To guard each hallowed wall !
And green for ever be the groves,

And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves

Its country and its God !

458 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

THE DEATH OF CLANRONALD

It was in the Battle of Sheriffmoor that young Clanronald fell, leading
on the Highlanders of the right wing. His death dispirited .the assailants,
who began to waver. But Glengary, chief of a rival branch of the clan
Colla, started from the ranks, and, waving his bonnet round his head,
cried out : ' To-day for revenge, and to-morrow for mourning !' The
Highlanders received a new impulse from his words, and, charging with
redoubled fury, bore down all before them. (See the Quarterly Review
article of ' Culloden Papers.')

Oh ! ne'er be Clanronald the valiant forgot !

Still fearless and first in the combat, he fell ;

But we paused not one tear-drop to shed o'er the spot,

We spared not one moment to murmur ' Farewell.'

We heard but the battle-word given by the chief,

' To-day for revenge, and to-morrow for grief !'

And wildly, Clanronald ! we echoed the vow,
With the tear on our cheek, and the sword in our hand ;
Young son of the brave ! we may weep for thee now,
For well has thy death been avenged by thy band,
When they joined, in wild chorus, the cry of the chief,
' To-day for revenge, and to-morrow for grief !'

Thy dirge in that hour was the bugle's wild call,
The clash of the claymore, the shout of the brave ;
But now thy own bard may lament for thy fall,
And the soft voice of melody sigh o'er thy grave —
While Albyn remembers the words of the chief,
' To-day for revenge, and to-morrow for grief !' '

Thou art fallen, O fearless one ! flower of thy race :
Descendant of heroes ! thy glory is set :
But thy kindred, the sons "of the battle and chase,
Have proved that thy spirit is bright in them yet !
Nor vainly have echoed the words of the chief,
' To-day for revenge, and to-morrow for grief !'

REV. JOHN KEBLE

1792-1866

' THE force and significance of poetry/ says, Mr. Shaw, ' in the
still current epoch are strikingly seen in the early history of
the Oxford Movement, which was heralded by poetry, awakened
by a poet, and led by poets. In a sermon preached by John
Keble, the most famous of its leaders afterwards discerned the
first note of the movement.'

John Keble was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, his

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 459

father being at that time Vicar of the parish. The Vicar was a
man of deep learning, who preferred having the teaching of his
son in his own hands to the more usual alternative of sending him
to school. In this case the preference was justified, for the pupil,
in his fifteenth year, obtained a scholarship at Corpus Christi.
His subsequent career at Oxford was an exceptionally distin-
guished one. At nineteen he had gained a double first and a
Fellowship at Oriel. This caused him to remain at the University
until 1823, when he left to act as curate to his father. He was
still in this position when, in 1833, he preached an Assize Sermon
at Oxford. It was to this discourse, published under the title
of National Apostasy, that Newman attributed the rise of the
Oxford Movement. During these ten years he had refused
many offers of preferment, but in 1835 he accepted the living
of Hursley, near Winchester, where he spent the remainder of
his unambitious and uneventful life. From 1833 to 1841 he
was Professor of Poetry at Oxford.

It would be impossible to overestimate the benefit which
this saintly and gifted poet has conferred upon the world by his
Christian Year, which was published first in 1827, and has run,
and is running, through almost countless editions. It is so well
known that it only calls for mention here. The public have
supplied the criticism in the popularity which it ever enjoys.
But we may quote these forcible words of Mr. Shaw in* con-
nection with it : 'In Keble met for the first time the eye and
the sensibility of a poet, the cultivated judgment and classical
taste of a trained scholar, the convinced faith of a Christian,
and the devotional spirit of a loyal Anglican.' In 1846 appeared
Lyra Innocentium, which was not so successful.

FROM 'THE CHRISTIAN YEAR'

CHRISTMAS DAY

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly
host praising God. — ST. LUKE ii. 13.

What sudden blaze of song

Spreads o'er the expanse of Heaven ?
In waves of light it thrills along,
The angelic signal given —
1 Glory to God !' from yonder central fire
Flows out the echoing lay beyond the starry choir ;

460 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Like circles widening round

Upon a clear blue river,
Orb after orb, the wondrous sound

Is echoed on for ever :
' Glory to God on high, on earth be peace,
And love towards men of love — salvation and release.'

Wrapp'd in His swaddling bands,

And in His manger laid.
The Hope and Glory of all lands
Is come to the world's aid :
No peaceful home upon His cradle smil'd,
sts rudely went and came, where slept the royal Child.

But where Thou dwellest, Lord,

No other thought should be,
Once duly welcom'd and ador'd,

How should I part with Thee ?

Bethlehem must lose Thee soon, but Thou wilt grace
The single heart to be Thy sure abiding-place.

Thee on the bosom laid

Of a pure virgin mind,
In quiet ever, and in shade,

Shepherd and sage may find ;

They, who have bow'd untaught to Nature's sway,
And they, who follow Truth along her star-pav'd way.

The pastoral spirits first

Approach Thee, Babe divine,
For they in lowty thoughts are nurs'd

Meet for Thy lowly shrine ;

Sooner than they should miss where Thou dost dwell,
Angels from Heaven will stoop to guide them to Thy cell.

Still, as the day comes round

For Thee to be reveal'd,
By wakeful shepherds Thou art found

Abiding in the field,

All through the wintry heaven and chill night air,
In music and in light Thou dawnest on their prayer.

O faint not ye for fear —

What though your wandering sheep,
Reckless of what they see and hear,

Lie lost in wilful sleep ?
High Heaven in mercy to your sad annoy
Still greets you with glad tidings of immortal joy.

Think on the eternal home
The Saviour left for you ;
Think on the Lord most holy, come

To dwell with hearts untrue :
So shall ye tread untir'd His pastoral ways,
And in the darkness sing your carol of high praise.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 461

ST. STEPHEN'S DAY

He, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and
saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. —
ACTS vii. 55.

As rays around the source of light
Stream upward ere he glow in sight,
And watching by his future flight

Set the clear heavens on fire ;
So on the King of Martyrs wait
Three chosen bands,1 in royal state,
And all earth owns, of good and great
Is gathered in that choir.

One presses on, and welcomes death
One calmly yields his willing breath,
Nor slow, nor hurrying, but in faith

Content to die or live :
And some, the darlings of their Lord,
Play smiling with the flame and sword
And, ere they speak, to His sure word

Unconscious witness give.

Foremost and nearest to His throne,
By perfect robes of triumph known.
And likest Him in look and tone,
. ' The holy Stephen kneels.

With steadfast gaze, as when the sky
Flew open to his fainting eye,
Which, like a fading lamp, flashed high,
Seeing what death conceals.

ST. MATTHIAS' DAY

Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that
the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of
John, unto that same day that He was taken up from us, must onejbe
ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection. — ACTS i. 21, 22.

Who is God's chosen priest ?
He who on Christ stands waiting day and night,
Who traced His holy steps, nor ever ceased,

From Jordan banks to Bethphage height :

Who hath learned lowliness

From His Lord's cradle, patience from His Cross ;
Whom poor men's eyes and hearts consent to bless ;

To whom, for Christ, the world is loss.
*****

Dread Searcher of the hearts,
Thou who didst seal by Thy descending Dove.
Thy servant's choice, O help us in our parts,

Else helpless found, to learn and teach Thy love.

1 Wheatley on the Common Prayer, chap, v., sect. iv. 2. ' As there are three
kinds of martyrdom, the first both in will and deed, which is the highest ;
the second in will but not in deed ; the third in deed but not in will ; so
the Church commemorates these martyrs in the same order : St. Stephen
first, who suffered death both in will and deed ; St. John the Evangelist
next, who suffered martyrdom in will but not indeed; the holy Innocents
last, who suffered in deed but not in will.'

462 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly
favoured, the Lord is with thee : blessed art thou among women. —
ST. LUKE i. 28.

*****

When wandering here a little span,
Thou took'st on Thee to rescue man,

Thou hadst no earthly sire :
That wedded love we prize so dear,
As ii our Heaven and home were here.

It lit in thee no fire.

On no sweet sister's faithful breast
Wouldst Thou Thine aching forehead rest,

On no kind brother lean :
' But who, O perfect filial heart,
E'er did like Thee a true son's part.

Endearing, firm, serene ?
*****
Ave Maria ! blessed Maid !
Lily of Eden's fragrant shade,

Who can express the love
That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,
Making thy heart a shelter meet

For Jesus' holy Dove ?

Ave Maria ! Mother blest,

To whom caressing and caressed,

Clings the Eternal Child ;
Favoured beyond archangels' dream,
When first on thee with tenderest gleam

Thy new-born Saviour smiled : —

Ave Maria ! thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim,

Yet may we reach thy shrine ;
For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows
To crown all lowly lofty brows

With love and joy like thine.

Blessed is the womb that bare Him — blessed
The bosom where His lips were pressed ! —

But rather blessed are they
Who hear His word and keep it well,
The living homes where Christ shall dwell,

And never pass away.

GOOD FRIDAY
He is despised and rejected of men. — ISA. liii. 3.

Is it not strange, the darkest hour

That ever dawned on sinful earth
Should touch the heart with softer power

For comfort, than an angel's mirth ?
That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn ?

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 463

Sooner than where the Easter sun

Shines glorious on yon open grave,
And to and fro the tidings run,

' Who died to heal, is risen to save ' ?
Sooner than where upon the Saviour's friends
The very Comforter in light and love descends ?

Yet so it is : for duly there

The bitter herbs of earth are set,
Till tempered by the Saviour's prayer,

And with the Saviour's life-blood wet,
They turn to sweetness, and drop holy balm,
Soft as imprisoned martyr's deathbed calm.

All turn to sweet — but most of all

That bitterest to the lip of pride,
When hopes presumptuous fade and fall,

Or Friendship scorns us, duly tried,
Or Love, the flower that closes up for fear
When rude and selfish spirits brea.the too near.

Then like a long-forgotten strain

Comes sweeping o'er the heart forlorn
What sunshine hours had taught in vain

Of Jesus suffering shame and scorn,
As in all lowly hearts He suffers still,
While we triumphant ride and have the world at will.

His pierced hands in vain would hide

His face from rude reproachful gaze,
His ears are open to abide

The wildest storm the tongue can raise,
He who with one rough word, some early day,
Their idol world and them shall sweep for aye away.

But we by Fancy may assuage

The festering sore by Fancy made,
Down in some lonely hermitage

Like wounded pilgrims safely laid.
Where gentlest breezes whisper souls distressed,
That Love yet lives, and Patience shall find rest.

Oh ! shame beyond the bitterest thought

That evil spirit ever framed,
That sinners know what Jesus wrought,

Yet feel their haughty hearts untamed :
That souls in refuge, holding by the Cross,
Should wince and fret at this world's little loss.

Lord of my heart, by Thy last cry,

Let not Thy blood on earth be spent !
Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie,

Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent,
Upon Thy streaming wounds my weary eyes
Wait like the parched earth on April skies.

Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,

O let my heart no further roam,
'Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears

Long since — O call Thy wanderer home ;
To that dear home, safe in Thy wounded side,
Where only broken hearts their sin and shame may hide.

464 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

TOM HOOD

1799-1845

TOM HOOD, as he is generally called, is remarkable for the
curious mixture of grotesque humour with depth of feeling
which marks his genius. He is only entitled to rank as a poet
of the second order, but amongst his brethren of that order he
must be accorded a high place.

Hood was born on the 23rd of May, 1799. In 1821 he became
assistant editor of the London Magazine, to which a large number
of the leading writers of the day contributed. Amongst these
were such kindred spirits as De Quincy, Hazlitt, Charles Lamb,
and Reynolds.

It was in the London Magazine that Hood's poem on Hope
was published. Reynolds collaborated with him in the pro-
duction of Odes and Addresses, which were published anony-
mously. Whims and Oddities soon followed. Hood was now
rapidly rising in fame, when unfortunately his publisher failed,
and the poet lost very considerably. He was obliged, through
stress of circumstances, to go to Coblenz with his family, and by
the practice of a very strict economy to try in some measure
to redeem his fortunes. This happened in 1835. From Coblenz
the family removed to Ostend in 1837, and finally came back to'
London in 1840. In the following year we find him editing the
New Monthly, and in 1843 his own magazine was started. A
pension, with reversion to his wife and daughter, was settled on
him in 1844, and on the 3rd of May, 1845, he died.

Hood is chiefly remembered as the author of Eugene Aram,
the Song of the Shirt, and the Bridge of Sighs, three poems which
are contained in every ' Popular Reciter,' and a number of
exquisitely comic pieces, which are in their own style quite
unequalled by anything else in the language. Those who look
upon him as merely a humorist do him a great injustice. There
can be no question about his being the greatest wit of his age,
but he also proved himself to be capable of the deepest serious-
ness and most delicate pathos at times. He can also command
' a pencil dipped in living light ' when he wishes to depict the
beauties of Nature or point the morals of her teaching, as in
Hero and Leander, or the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies. As

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 465

for his fun, it is supreme. Perhaps his perpetual punning may
pall a little at times, but there is a clearness and a freshness
about his constant stream of humour which is as refreshing
as the spray of a waterfall. It is utterly devoid of vulgarity or
coarseness, and though we may not laugh at it, 'tis strange if
we are not amused.

Hood has been called by Mr. W. M. Rossetti ' the finest
English poet between the generation of Shelley and the generation
of Tennyson.' Lowell's verses, To the Memory of Hood, so
well express his virtues that we venture to quote them here :

Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped,
To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas ;

Another heart that beat for freedom stopped, —
What mournful words are these !

O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth,

And lullest it upon thy heart,
Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth

To teach men what thou art !

His was a spirit that to all thy poor

Was kind as slumber after pain :
Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's door

And call him home again ?

Freedom needs all her poets : it is they.-

Who give her aspirations wings,
And to the wiser law of music sway
Her wild imaginings.

Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind,

O Love Divine, for 'tis thy will
That gracious natures leave their love behind

To work for Freedom still.

Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs.

Let anthems peal for other dead,
Rustling the bannered depth of minster-glooms

With their exulting spread.

His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone,

No lichen shall its lines efface,
He needs these few and simple lines alone

To mark his resting-place : —

' H'jre lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee

His claim to memory be obscure,
If them wouldst learn how truly great was he,

(io, ask it of the poor.'

A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON
AGED THREE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS

Thou happy, happy elf !
1 it stop — first let me kiss away that tear) —

Thou tiny image of myself !
(IV y love, he's poking peas into his ear !)

30

466 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Thou merry, laughing sprite !

With spirits feather-light,
Untouched by sorrow and unsoiled by sin —
(Good heavens ! the child is swallowing a pin !)

Thou little tricksy Puck !
With antic toys so funnily bestuck,
Light as the singing bird that wings the air —
(The door ! the door ! he'll tumble down the stair !)

Thou darling of thy sire !
(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire !)

Thou imp of mirth and joy !
In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link,
Thou idol of thy parents — (Drat the boy ! There goes my ink !)

Thou cherub ! — but of earth ;
Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale,

In harmless sport and mirth,
(That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail !)

Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey
From every blossom in the world that blows,
Singing in youth's Elysium ever sunny —
(Another tumble ! — that's his precious nose !)

Thy father's pride and hope !

(He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope !)
With pure heart newly stamped from Nature's mint —
(Where did he learn that squint ?)

Thou young domestic dove !
(He'll have that jug off with another shove !)
.Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest !
(Are those torn clothes his best ?)

Little epitome of man !

(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan !)
Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life —

(He's got a knife !)

Thou enviable being !
No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,

Play on. play on,

My elfin John !

Toss the light ball — bestride the stick —
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick !)
With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk.

With many a lamb-like frisk —
(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown ')

Thou pretty opening rose !

(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose !)
Balmy and breathing music like the South,
(He really brings my heart into my mouth !)
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star,
(I wish that window had an iron bar !)
old as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove —

(I'll tell you what, my love,
I cannot write unless he's sent above !)

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 467

I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER

I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn ;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away !

I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light !
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday, — -
The tree is living yet !

] remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing ;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now ;

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow !

IV

I remember, I remember,

The fir-trees dark and high ;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky :

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm further off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.

FAITHLESS SALLY BROWN
AN OLD BALLAD

Young Ben he was a nice young man,

A carpenter by trade ;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,

That was a lady's maid.

But as they fetch'd a walk one day.

They met a press-gang crew :
And Sally she did faint away,

Whilst Ben he was brought to.

30—2

468 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The Boatswain swore with wicked words,
Enough to shock a saint,

That though she did seem in a fit,
'Twas nothing but a feint.

' Come, girl," said he, ' hold up your head

He'll be as good as me ;
For when your swain is in our boat,

A boatswain he will be.'

So when they'd made their game of her,

And taken off her elf,
She roused, and found she only was

A-coming to herself.

' And is he gone, and is he gone ?'
She cried, and wept outright

' Then I will to the water side,
And see him out of sight.'

A waterman came up to her,
' Now, young woman,' said he,

' If you weep on so, you will make
Eye-water in the sea.'

' Alas ! they've taken my beau Ben
To sail with old Benbow ; '

And her woe began to run afresh,
As if she'd said Gee woe !

Says he, ' They've only taken him
To the Tender ship, you see ; '

' The Tender ship,' cried Sally Brown,
' What a hard-ship that must be

' Oh ! would I were a mermaid now,

For then I'd follow him ;
But oh ! — I'm not a fish-woman,

And so I cannot swim.

' Alas ! I was not born beneath
The Virgin and the Scales,

So I must curse my cruel stars,
And walk about in Wales.'

Now Ben had sailed to many a place
That's underneath the world ;

But in two years the ship came home,
And all her sails were furl'd.

But when he call'd on Sally Brown,

To see how she got on,
He found she'd got another Ben,

Whose Christian name was John.

' O Sally Brown, O Sally Brown,
How could you serve me so ?

I've met with many a breeze before,
But never such a blow.'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 469

Then reading on his 'bacco box,

He heaved a bitter sigh,
And then began to eye his pipe,

And then to pipe his eye.

And then he tried to sing ' All's Well,'

But could not though he tried ;
His head was turned , and so he chewed

His pigtail till he died.

His death, which happened in his berth,

At forty-odd befell :
They went and told the sexton, and

The sexton toll'd the bell.

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread —
Stitch— stitch — stitch !

In poverty, hunger, and dirt ;

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch.

She sang the ' Song of the Shirt !'

' Work — work — work !

While the cock is crowing aloof !

And work — work — work !
Till the stars shine through the roof !
It's oh ! to be a slave,

Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,

Tf this is Christian work !

' Work — work — work !

Till the brain begins to swim ;

Work — work — work !
Till the eyes are heavy and dim !
Seam, and gusset, and band —

Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,

And sew them on in a dream !

' Oh ! men with sisters dear !

Oh ! men with mpthers and wives !
It is not linen you're wearing out,

But human creatures' lives !
Stitch — stitch — stitch !

In poverty, hunger, and dirt ;
Sewing at once, with a double thread,

A shroud as well as a shirt.

' But why do I talk of Death ?

That phantom of grisly bone ;
I hardly fear its terrible shape,

It seems so like my own —

It seems so like my own,

Because of the fasts I keep ;
O God ! that bread should be so dear,

And flesh and blood so cheap !

470 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Work — work — work !

My labour never flags ;
And what are its wages ? A bed of straw,

A crust of bread — and rags.
That shattered roof, — and this naked floor, —

A table, — a broken chair, —
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

For sometimes falling there !

' Work — work — work !
From weary chime to chime,

Work — work — work —
As prisoners work for crime !

Band, and gusset, and seam,

Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed

As well as the weary hand.

' Work — work — work !

In the dull December light,

And work — work — work !
When the weather is warm and bright ;
While underneath the eaves

The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show me their sunny backs

And twit me with the spring.

' Oh ! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet —

With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet !
For only one short hour

To,feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want

And the walk that costs a meal !

' Oh ! but for one short hour !

A respite however brief !
No blessed leisure for love or hope,

But only time for grief !
A little weeping would ease my heart,

But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop

Hinders needle and thread !'

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread —
Stitch — stitch— stitch !

In poverty, hunger, and dirt ;
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, —
Would that its tone could reach the rich ! —

She sang this ' Song of the Shirt !'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 471

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY

1800-1859

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY was the son of Zachary Macaulay,
who is famous in history as one of the earliest opponents of the
slave trade. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,
of which he eventually became a Fellow. He was called to the
Bar at Lincoln's Inn, entered Parliament in 1830, and went to
India in 1834, as President of the Law Commission and a Member
of the Council in Calcutta. On his return he re-entered the
House of Commons, and became successively Secretary of State
for War and Paymaster of the Forces. He was raised to the
Peerage in 1857, and died on the 28th of December, 1859. ' He
was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, his favourite
haunt.'

Lord Macaulay was distinguished as a poet, a statesman, an
essayist, and a historian. As a poet, he is chiefly celebrated
for his Lays of A ncient Rome, but he also wrote many exquisitely
finished poems on miscellaneous subjects. Two of his poems
were suggested by the struggle of the Huguenots with the
Catholics in France, and two by famous incidents in English
history — namely, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the
overthrow of Charles I. at the Battle of Naseby. His Lines to
the Memory of Pitt, which were written -when he was only thirteen
years of age, may be classed under the head of historical poems,
as may also his translation of the poem The Deliverance of Vienna,
which commemorates the victory which saved Europe from the
Ottoman horde. The longest of his miscellaneous poems is the
Marriage of Tirzah and Ahirad, which was suggested by a verse
in the Book of Genesis. His translation of the Dies Irce and
his Sermon in a Churchyard, are also worthy of mention.

The Lays of Ancient Rome were published in 1842. Sir George
Trevelyan tells us concerning them ' the public approbation
needed no prompter.' Eighteen thousand copies were sold in
ten years, forty thousand in twenty years, and by June, 1875,
upwards of a hundred thousand copies had passed into the hands
of readers. Nor has their popularity begun to wane.

Dean Milman, in his Memoir of Lord Macaulay, speaking of

472 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

the poet's style, says : ' Its characteristics were vigour and
animation, copiousness, clearness, above all, sound English,
now a rare excellence.'

IVRY1
A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are !

And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre !

Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,

Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France !

And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,

Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.

As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,

For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy

Hurrah ! Hurrah ! a single field hath turned the chance of war ;,

Hurrah ! Hurrah ! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre.

Oh ! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array ;
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land !
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand :
And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood
And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood ;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

The King is come to marshal us, in all his armour dresit,

And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.

He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye ;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.

Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,

Down all our line, a deafening shout, ' God save our lord the King !'

' And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may —

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray —

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,

And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.'

Hurrah ! the foes are moving ! Hark to the mingled din
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. Andre's plain,
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.

1 The Battle of Ivry, fought in 1590, was the most brilliant victory
of Henry IV. of France, better known as Henry of Navarre. In it he
defeated the Guises and the League, who had their hands deep dyed in
the blood of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Although at Ivry Henry
was the champion of Protestantism in France, he was by no means a
rigorous enthusiast, and when the time came was quite willing to accept
the Catholic faith as one of the elements of the compromise which secured
his succession to the throne. Paris, in his opinion, was well worth a Mass,
but that famous saying had not been uttered, and would have been scouted
indignantly, by the men in whose mouths Macaulay has placed his spirited

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 473

Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,

Charge for the golden lilies, — upon them with the lance !

A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,

A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest ;

And in they burst, and on they rushed, while like a guiding star,

Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

Now, God be praised, the day is ours ! Mayenne hath turned his rein.

D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish Count is slain.

Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale ;

The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.

And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,

' Remember St. Bartholomew !' was passed from man to man ;

But out spake gentle Henry, ' No Frenchman is my foe :

Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.'

Oh ! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,

As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre ?

Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day ;

And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.

But we of the religion have borne us best in fight ;

And the good lord of Rosny has ta'en the cornet white.

Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en,

The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine.

Up with it high ; unfurl it wide ; that all the host may know

How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church

such woe.

Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest points of war,
Fling the red shreds, a foot-cloth meet for Henry of Navarre.

Ho ! maidens of Vienna ! Ho ! matrons of Lucerne !

Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.

Ho ! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls.

Ho I gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright ;

Ho ! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night.

For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,

And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valour of the brave.

Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are ;

And glory to our Sovereign lord. King Henry of Navarre.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

1809-1892

' THE fate of Tennyson's writings in the future/ says Mr. Shaw,
in closing an able and exhaustive sketch of the great Laureate's
life and work, ' the future only can show. But he has been to
his own age much more than any other poet has ever been to his ;
he has been not only a pure well-head of noblest song, but also
an unfailing spring of comfort, stimulus, and power towards the

474 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

worthiest ends. No other English poet has ever been in such
close and sympathetic touch, not with Nature and Man alone,
but with so many sides of contemporary life, in such intimate
intelligence with the most beneficent forces of his age. This
age has found in his verse a melodious voice for its thoughts,
longings, and aspirations ; but has found something better also,
a corrective, if it will only listen, to much that is unsound and
dangerous in these. Whatever posterity may think of him, he
-has laid his contemporaries under a debt of gratitude that could
hardly be exaggerated.'

A noble tribute this to the memory of a noble mind.

Alfred Tennyson was one of seven sons of the Rector of
Somersby, near Horncastle, and first saw the light on the 6th of
August, 1809. Two of his brothers shared with him the liking, and
in a measure the gift, for verse-making. These were Frederick
and Charles. Alfred lived chiefly in his native county until he had
completed his nineteenth year, a circumstance which naturally
tended to give ' local colour ' to much of his earlier verse. His
first educational institution was the grammar-school of Louth,
at which he was well taught from his eighth till his twelfth year.
He was further educated by his father, and by private tutors, at
his own home. In childhood he began to ' stir up the gift that
was in him ' by putting his thoughts in rhyme. His chief com-
panion and sympathizer in these early efforts was his brother'
Charles. In Alfred's eighteenth year the young poets were in need
of money to cover the cost of a contemplated tour, and, guided
by the advice of the coachman, they went to a bookseller at
Louth and sold the copyright of such verses as they had in stock
for the substantial sum of £20. The works were duly issued in
a decent volume under the title of Poems by Two Brothers. The
book contained one hundred and two poems, but there was no
clue given as to which were by Alfred and which were by Charles.
The biographer of the greater poet must therefore be content with
a passing reference to them as containing the first-fruits of his
budding genius.

It has been commonly supposed that Tennyson was all
along, if not rich, at least well off. This, it seems, is a mistake.
When the home of his mother at Somersby Rectory, his early
home, was broken up, Tennyson came to London. Mrs. Ritchie,
one of his personal friends, states that he was poor, and had to

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 475

meet that wholesome struggle with poverty which brings the
vagueness of genius into contact with reality. He lived at the
Temple, 58, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and elsewhere.

Mrs. Ritchie, coming to her own personal intercourse with the
poet, has some pleasant notes on Tennyson's residence at the
Isle of Wight, Farringford House, near Freshwater.

' The house at Farringford itself seemed like a charmed palace,
with green walls without and speaking walls within. There
hung Dante, with his solemn nose and wreath ; Italy gleamed
over the doorways ; friends' faces lined the way ; books filled
the shelves ; and a glow of crimson was everywhere. The great
oriel drawing-room window was full of green and golden leaves,
of the sound of birds, and of the distant sea. The very names
of the people who have stood upon the lawn at Farringford would
be an interesting study for some future biographer — Longfellow,
Kingsley, the Duke of Argyll, Locker, Dean Stanley, the Prince
Consort. Garibaldi once planted a tree there. The lovely
places and sweet country all about Farringford are not among
the least of its charms. Beyond the primrose island itself and
the blue Solent the New Forest spreads its shades, and the green
depths reach to the very shores.'

Alfred went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1828. He can-
not be said to have distinguished himself as a student, beyond
obtaining the Chancellor's Medal in 1829 for a poem in blank
verse on the prosaic subject of Timbuctoo. This production
of the future Laureate was favourably noticed in the Athenceum,
and was greatly admired by the inner circle at the University.
In spite of this success, Tennyson, strangely enough, left his
college without having proceeded to a degree.

In 1830 a Cornhill publisher produced a volume entitled
Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson. In this collection
were fifty- three pieces, and amongst them such poems as Claribel,
The Ballad of Oriana, and Mariana in the Moated Grange.
Many of these gave clear evidence that ' a minstrel of brilliant
promise was trying his 'prentice hand upon the lyre of English
song.' There was a certain amount of coldness evinced in its
reception by some of the hypercritical, though, on the whole, it
met with a reception which, for a first attempt, was distinctly
encouraging to the young poet.

A second volume appeared in 1833, which was an improve-

476 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

ment on the first. It contained, amongst many other poems,
The Miller's Daiighter, The Queen of the May, The Lady of
Shalott, and The Lotus Eaters. It may seem incredible that
this bouquet of sweet song could be unfavourably criticised,
viewing it as we must in the light of its subsequent popularity.
Yet such was the case. The critics were as unkind as they were
unjust, and a feeling of resentment almost equal to Byron's settled
down upon the poet's spirit. Though he had replied, not very
happily, indeed, to a former attack, he took refuge in silence
now. The Lover's Tale, which he had composed at Cambridge,
and now had ready for the press, was held back, and did not
appear until 1879. To add to his dejection, Arthur Hallam, his
most revered and devoted friend, died suddenly in Vienna in
1833, a sorrow which cast a deep and lasting gloom over the
poet's soul.

For nine years from the date of these calamities Tennyson
published nothing. Yet in private his brain and his pen were
not at rest. In the quietude of his study he was bringing to life
the best and sweetest offspring of his latent genius. He was
educating himself, and the flower of his divine muse was un-
folding its rich beauties leaf by leaf, as does an exotic fed and
nourished by the warmth of the garden-house. No one now
can grudge the recluse the sanctity of his inner chamber, when
they remember that Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Dora, and The-
Gardener's Daughter were born there. It was there, too, that
the gifted singer gave of his best to the building up of Locksley
Hall. Two volumes appeared in 1842, which brought the
sternest and most exacting of critics to the poet's feet, and made
him known to the world as an acknowledged and accepted ex-
ponent of the subtlest powers of song. The most eminent men
of letters bowed before their unquestioned merits, the triumph
was complete, and the once-despised versifier rose to the highest
rung of popular favour and literary fame.

It was not long after this that Sir Robert Peel made Tennyson
a grant of £200 a year from the Government Exchequer. This
was not merely a welcome addition to the poet's moderate
income, but a reward which many felt to be well deserved.
Bulwer Lytton, however, was not pleased, and gave that fact
out to the world in The New Timon. This time Tennyson
retorted somewhat severely through the medium of Punch.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 477

In 1847 Tennyson's name was again brought prominently
before the public by the publication of The Princess, a Medley.
Its theme is thus summarized by Dr. Collier :

' At a little picnic on the grassy turf within a ruin, seven
college men tell the tale in turn, and

' The women sang

Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind.

A prince and princess are betrothed, but have never met. He
loves the unseen beauty ; she, influenced by two strong-minded
widows, hates the thoughts of marriage, and founds a University
for girls. Disguised in female dress, the Prince and two friends
don the academic robes of lilac silk, and mingle with the gentle
undergraduates. All goes well — lectures are duly attended —
until upon a geological excursion the Princess falls into a whirling
river, and is snatched from the brink of a cataract by her lover.
The secret being thus discovered, the pretenders are expelled,
in spite of a life saved. Then comes war between the kingdoms ;
the Prince is struck senseless in the strife ; and as Ida, the
Head of the College, moves round the sick-bed, where he lies
hovering between life and death, a new light dawns upon her.
She begins to feel that the gentle ministrations of home are a
fitter study for her sex than the quadrature of the circle or the
properties of amygdaloid. By degrees

' A closer interest flourished up,
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears,
By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gathered colour day by day.

' We never think of characterizing the poem by adjectives
like " sublime " or " magnificent," for it pretends to no such
qualities as these express. "Exquisite," "beautiful," "graceful,"
" tender," are rather the words we choose. A delicate playful-
ness runs through every page, like a golden thread through rich
brocade. But with the sweet satiric touch there often mingles
a tone of deep social wisdom, which exalts the poem far above
mere prettiness. Some of the intervening lyrics are the perfec-
tion of lingual music, especially those lines descriptive of a bugle-
note sounded amid the rocky shores of a lake.'

478 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And yet again we must record the fact that as regards the
hypercritical there was, and is, a vaguely hinted at ' something '
which does not satisfy.

The year 1850 has been rightly called the ' great year ' of
Tennyson. It saw the publication of In Memoriam, which
before December had run to a third edition. A third edition
of The Princess, and a sixth of the Poems, were also published,
while, to crown all, the poet was married to a lady who dwelt
in the neighbourhood of his father's Rectory. Moreover, in this
year he was made Laureate.

In Memoriam is a tribute to the memory of his lost friend,
whose body was brought from Vienna to England, and laid in
the chancel of Cleveden Church, in Somersetshire. It abounds
in tender quatrains such as this :

I hold it true, whate'er befall ;

I feel it when I sorrow most ;

'Tis better to have loved and lost.
Than never to have loved at all.

And these :

The Danube to the Severn gave

The darkened heart that beats no more ;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills ;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.

Tennyson's chief works in his official capacity as Poet-Laureate
are his Ode on the Death of Wellington ; a poem To the Queen,
which, dated March, 1851, now serves as a Dedication in the
collective volume of his works ; lines to H.R.H. Princess Beatrice ;
and a poem On the Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale.

Maud was published in 1855. Of all the poet's works, it is
accounted ' the most piercingly dramatic, impassioned, and in-
tensely yet delicately tender,' to quote the words of Mr. Shaw.
At this time Tennyson was residing at his favourite residence of
Farringford, in the Isle of Wight. From this favoured spot
there issued also those inimitable lyrics, Hands all Round, in
1852 ; The Charge of the Light Brigade, in 1854 ; and Riflemen,
Form ! in 1859.

Mr. Shaw has furnished the student with the following most

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 479

helpful account of the various stages through which the ' whole
Round Table ' went, part by part, before it stood complete in
its present form as The Idylls of the King :

' It now consists of twelve parts — The Coming of Arthur and
The Passing of Arthur enclosing between them the ten other
Idylls of the King that have at different times fallen into the
scheme of " The Round Table." Of these twelve the last was
the first to appear, in 1842, as the famous Morte d' Arthur.
Next came, in 1859, and under the title of Idylls of the King,
the third and fourth (first published as a simple Idyll, and called
Enid) ; the sixth and seventh, called respectively Vivien and
Elaine ; and the eleventh, Guinevere. In 1869 the first, eighth,
and ninth — these two being The Holy Grail and Palleas and
Etarre — were added, when, too, the last was given under its
new name ; and then the scheme of the gathering poem was
first revealed. The second and tenth — Gareth and Lynette, and
The Last Tournament — joined the muster in 1872 ; and in 1885
the fifth, Balin and Balan, closed the list, so far as it has gone.'

Thus completed, it forms a magnificent epic, setting forth,
as in few if any like efforts is it set forth, ' an image of the
mighty world.' The poet and others have read an allegorical
significance into it, telling us that ' by King Arthur the soul is
meant, by the Round Table the passions and capacities of a
man.' But the wisdom of this has been doubted by others, who,
like Mr. Shaw himself, prefer to look upon it as ' an epic of
humanity transported by the poet into an ideal world, starting
enthusiastically towards the realization of high ideals, yet
moving towards a very different destiny, towards the social
ruin and dissolution that is the penalty of their own sin.'

Minor poems, which achieved a lasting popularity of their
own, followed upon this great masterpiece. To mention all
the poet's occasional and fugitive pieces, contributed to various
journals, would require greater space than a general history
can give. Between 1875 and 1884 six plays appeared — Queen
Mary, Harold, The Falcon, The Cup, The Promise of May, and
Becket. All these, with the exception of Harold, have been
dramatized and produced on the London stage. Becket was a
distinct success.

Ballads and Other Poems were published in 1880, Teiresias
and Other Poems in 1885, Locksley Hall and Sixty Years After

480 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

in 1886, and Demeter and Other Poems in 1890. In his declining
years he gave to the world a last instalment of the fruit of his
still transcendent genius. In 1892 The Foresters, a pastoral
drama in four acts, based on the story of Robin Hood, was pro-
duced simultaneously in London and New York. On the 6th of
October in that year the world was saddened by the news that
at Aldworth, his home at Haslemere, the soul of Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, had passed to its rest. He lies in the Poets' Corner
at Westminster, where he was laid with fitting honour by his
sorrowing countrymen. By a striking, if mournful, coincidence,
one of the most beautiful of his later poems was that perennial
piece which he entitled Crossing the Bar, which runs as follows :

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me !
And may there be no moaning of the bar

When I put out to sea ;

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark !
And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark ;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

It is perhaps too soon to say with any degree of certainty what
place posterity will assign to Alfred Tennyson in the annals of
English song. But we may fairly predict that his present well-
won, and one might almost say well-fought-for, position in the
very first rank will be long maintained. Perhaps he has not
always written for all time, but he has done for his day and
generation what few can be accredited with. He has touched
and set to softest and sweetest music all the greatest topics of
the time in which he lived. Society at its highest and lowest
has been reached and influenced by the magic of his pen. He
has portrayed in vivid and imperishable words the lives and
characters of men and women better than has any poet since
the days when Shakespeare wrote. Even the genius of Chaucer
is reflected in his human pictures. As an exponent of the power

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 481

and beauty of the true idyll he has excelled all others. Like
Browning, he is often complained of as difficult to understand.
True, his pearls are sometimes in the depths, and the expert
must search to find them. But the sound of his music is in the
air, and the notes of his lyre are as pure and as soul-inspiring as
any that have been produced in our day.

It has been stated more than once that Tennyson was not at
all anxious to accept a peerage, and Miss Weld, in her excellent
Glimpses of Tennyson, says that he laid a solemn charge upon her
to ' let all the world know how great a sacrifice he had practised
in yielding to Mr. Gladstone's pressing entreaties.' Tenny-
son resented the idea that he was to be treated as an artist in
metre at the expense of his reputation as a teacher. He once
said to Miss Weld that ' he felt that the gift of poetry was
bestowed on him by his Heavenly Father as a great trust,
that it might be a vehicle in which he was permitted to convey
to his fellow-men the message that he had received from the
Master.'

Charles Tennyson, who afterwards changed his name to Turner,
on account of some inherited property, was himself a great poet
' in his own most sweet degree.' There is something specially
gifted about his sonnets which have been the solace of more than
one great mind. His greater brother loved to quote from them,
as did also Samuel Taylor Coleridge and James Spedding, the
critic, the poet's life-long friend. In the introduction to a
volume of the collected sonnets, published after the death of
Charles, Mr. Spedding quotes the passage which describes the
dawn of a summer day :

But one sole star, none other anywhere ;
A wild-rose odour from the fields was borne ;
The lark's mysterious joy filled earth and air,
And from the wind's top met the hunter's horn ;
The aspen trembled wildly ; and the morn
Breathed up in rosy clouds divinely fair.

The sons must have inherited their poetical gifts from their
father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., ' a tall,
striking, and impressive man, full of accomplishments and parts,
a strong nature, high-souled, high-tempered. He was the head
of the old family ; but his own elder-brother share of its good
things had passed by will into the hands of another branch,
which is still represented by the Tennysons d'Eyncourt. Perhaps

482 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

before he died he may have realized that to one of his had come
possessions greater than any ever yet entailed by lawyer's deeds
— an inheritance, a priceless Benjamin's portion, not to be
measured or defined.'

IN MEMORIAM

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light :
The year is dying in the night ;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow :
The year is going, let him go ;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more ;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife ;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times ;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes.

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite ;
Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ;
Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

THE THROSTLE

' Summer is coming, summer is coming,

I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again !'

Yes, my wild little poet.

Sing the New Year in under the blue ;

Last year you sang it so gladly.
' New, new, new, new !' Is it, then, so new

That you carol so madly ?

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 483

' Love again, song again, nest again, young again !'

Never a prophet so crazy !
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,

See ! there is hardly a daisy.

' Here again, here, here, happy year !'

O warble, unchidden, unbidden.
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,

And all the winters are hidden.

SONG
FROM ' THE PRINCESS '

The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story ;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going !
O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing !
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying :
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river :
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA, MARCH 7, 1863

Sea-kings' daughter from over the sea,

Alexandra !

Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,
But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee,

Alexandra !

Welcome her, thunders of fort and of fleet !
Welcome her, thundering cheer of the street !
Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet.
Scatter the blossoms under her feet !
Break, happy land, into earlier flowers !
Make music, O bird, in the new-budded bowers !
Blazon your mottoes of blessing and prayer 1
Welcome her, welcome her, all that is ours !
Warble, O bugle, and trumpet, blare !
Flags, flutter out upon turrets and towers !
Flames, on the windy headland flare !
Utter your jubilee, steeple, and spire !
Clash, ye bells, in the merry March air !
Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire !
Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher
Melt into stars for the land's desire !

31—2

484 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Roll and rejoice, jubilant voice,
Roll as a ground-swell dash'd on the strand
Roar as the sea when he welcomes the land,
And welcome her, welcome the land's desire,
The sea-kings' daughter as happy as fair,
Blissful bride of a blissful heir,
Bride of the heir of the kings of the sea —
O joy to the people and joy to the throne,
Come to us, love us, and make us your own :
For Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,
We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee,

Alexandra !

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Circa 1809-1861

' PLEASE to recollect/ wrote the subject of this memoir to a
friend, ' that when I talk of women, I do not speak of them as
many men do ... according to a separate peculiar and
womanly standard, but according to the common standard of
human nature.' And the keynote of her', marvellous person-
ality is contained in these words. It is not as an intellectual
woman merely, but as a great writer of perennial poetry, that
history views the life and work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Mrs. Browning was a native of London, and very early in life
became a contributor to some of the leading journals of the day.-
In 1833 she published a translation of Prometheus Bound.
This was the first work which was identified with her name.
Two volumes of her poems were issued in 1844. In the year
1846 she became the wife of Robert Browning, the distinguished
poet, after which her health began to fail, and she was obliged
to go and live in Italy, first in Pisa, and eventually in Florence.
The woes of her adopted country appealed very strongly to the
tender heart of the poetess, and in 1851 she published a poem
called Casa Guidi Windows.

The greatest of Mrs. Browning's poems is Aurora Leigh,
which appeared in 1856. It is a work of transcendent genius,
' in which the most gifted woman of the Victorian era places on
record the aspirations of the awakening womanhood of the
Nineteenth Century.' Poems before Congress were published
shortly before her death, which took place at the Casa Guidi,
Florence, on the 2gth of June, 1861.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 485

Critics are almost unanimous in giving to this poetess the very
first place on the list of female writers of verse. In fact, it has
long been decided that she is beyond question the greatest
poetess that any age or country has produced. We may go
a step further, and say with Edgar Allan Poe, one of her greatest
admirers, that we have a conviction ' not idly entertained, nor
founded on any visionary basis, that she surpassed all her
poetical contemporaries of either sex, with a single exception.'

Had Mrs. Browning bequeathed us nothing but that exquisite
poem The Cry of the Children, which we subjoin, she would have
established an undying claim to the gratitude of the world. Mr.
Stead tells us rightly that ' it is versified Blue-Book, no doubt,
but it is a poem which, wrung from the heart, goes to the heart,
and will never cease to be a power making for righteousness so
long as the English language is spoken on the earth. At this
moment it nerves the heart of the forlorn and struggling remnant
who, in many American States, are endeavouring to rescue the
children from the Inferno to which they are at present too often
doomed in the name of the sacred principle of the sanctity of
contract. It helps all those who in this country have just
rescued the new Factory Bill from the wreck of the legislation
of the late Parliament. When it was published it was the most
effective answer to the protest of Mr. Bright and others of the
Manchester School against the Factory Acts, and it remains to
this day the most -eloquent and the most pathetic plea for the
little ones that the world has ever heard.'

Lady Geraldine's Courtship was published in 1844. It is an
exquisite piece of work, somewhat suggestive of Tennyson's
Locksley Hall. It is said to have been begun and finished in a
twelve hours' sitting. Mr. Peter Bayne says ' Lady Geraldine's
Courtship is steeped in melody — the language, the imagery, the
sentiment, the thought, all instinct with music, floating and
flowing and rippling along in an element of liquid harmony and
modulated brilliance. The finest wine of her genius, the in-
tensest elixir of her poetic sympathy, the very essence of her
womanly pride, and not less of her womanly ecstasy of self-
surrendering humility, as well as of her most original imagery,
puissant thought, and splendid language, are present in this
poem of " the right divine of love to set its foot on the neck of
pride." '

486 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The imaginative or creative faculty stands pre-eminently for-
ward in the writings of this singularly gifted woman. Her
Satan in the Drama of Exile is acknowledged by eminent critics
to be one of the finest creations in the whole range of literature.
Yet her writings are not absolutely without fault. In her flights
of wild ambition she sometimes soars to an atmosphere which
she seems to breathe with difficulty, as though now and then
she were actually gasping for breath. And so some of her work
shows a lack of finish which is all the more striking by contrast
with what she has done perfectly. It is rugged, and sometimes
quite devoid of rhythm. Even some stanzas in Aurora Leigh
might be taken for prose as easily as for poetry. But this is
hypercriticism.

There is a suggestion of egoism in the poetry of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, and she herself would have been the last
person to deny the fact. The secret of this circumstance lies
in the soulfulness of her work. To her life was poetry, and
poetry was life. ' Poetry has been as serious a thing to me,' she
writes, ' as life itself ; and life has been a very serious thing.
I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor
leisure for the hour of the poet.' She viewed her art as second
only to the dominant feeling which should inspire all art — the
feeling of love.

Art is much, but Love is more ;
O Art, my Art, thou'rt much, but Love is more.
Art symbolizes heaven, but Love is God
And makes heaven.

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

The Cry of the Children appeared originally in Blackwood's Magazine in
August, 1843. Mr. Home, who had been appointed by the Government
an Assistant Commissioner to the Commission appointed to inquire into
the Employment of Children in Mines and Manufactories, wrote a Report,
which Mrs. Browning (then Miss Elizabeth Barrett) read. To that cir-
cumstance we owe this poem — a masterpiece, 'full of a nervous, unflinching
energy — a horror sublime in its simplicity — of which Dante himself might
have been proud.' Here the mother-soul in the woman, as yet unwedded,
found for the first time its full prophetic utterance.

o/j./j.a<nv, re^xya.. — MEDEA.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —

And that cannot stop their tears.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 487

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ;

The young birds are chirping in the nest ;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows ;

The young flowers are blowing toward the west —
But the young, young children, O my brothers,

They are weeping bitterly ! —
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow.

Why their tears are falling so ? —
The old man may weep for his to-morrow

Which is lost in Long Ago —
The old tree is leafless in the forest —
The old year is ending in the frost —
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest —

The old hope is hardest to be lost :
But the young, young children, O my brothers,

Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,

In our happy Fatherland ?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses

Down the cheeks of infancy —
' Your old earth,' they say, ' is very dreary ;'

' Our young feet,' they say, ' are very weak !
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary —

Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children

For the outside earth is cold, —
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,

And the graves are for the old.

' True,' say the young children, ' it may happen

That we die before our time.
Little Alice died last year — the grave is shapen

Like a snowball, in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her —

Was no room for any work in the close clay :
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

Crying, " Get up, little Alice ! it is day."
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

With your ear down, little Alice never cries ! —
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,

For the smile has time for growing in her eyes, — .
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in

The shroud, by the kirk-chime !

It is good when it happens,' say the children,

' That we die before our time.'

A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Alas, alas, the children ! they are seeking

Death in life, as best to have !
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,

With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city —

Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do —
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty —
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through !
But they answer, ' Are your cowslips of the meadows

Like our weeds anear the mine ?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine !

VI

' For oh,' say the children, ' we are weary,

And we cannot run or leap —
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely

To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping —

We fall upon our faces, trying to go ;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,

Through the coal-dark, underground —
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron

In the factories, round and round.

' For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning, —

Their wind comes in our faces, —
Till our hearts turn, — our head, with pulses burning,

And the walls turn in their places —
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling ;
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall ;
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling —

All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And, all day, the iron wheels are droning ;

And sometimes we could pray,
" O ye wheels " — breaking out in a mad moaning —

" Stop ! be silent for to-day !" '

Ay ! be silent ! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth —
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth !
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals —
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels !
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

Grinding life down from its mark ;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 489

Now, tell the poor young children, O my brothers.

To look up to Him and pray —
So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day.

They answer, ' Who is God that He should hear us
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred ?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word !
And we hear not — for the wheels in their resounding-

Strangers speaking at the door :
Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,

Hears our weeping any more ?

' Two words, indeed, of praying we remember ;

And at midnight's hour of harm, —
" Our Father," looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words except " Our Father,"

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather.

And hold both within His right hand which is strong,
" Our Father !" If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

" Come and rest with Me, Mv child."

' But no !' say the children, weeping faster,

' He is speechless as a stone ;
And they tell us, of His image is the master

Who commands us to work on.
Go to !' say the children, — ' Up in Heaven,

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
Do not mock us ; grief has made us unbelieving — -

We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.1
Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,

O my brothers, what ye preach ?
For God's possible is taught by His world's loving—

And the children doubt of each.

XH

And well may the children weep before you ;

They are weary ere they run ;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory

Which is brighter than the sun :
They know the grief of man, but not the wisdom
They sink in man's despair, without its calm —
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, —

Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm, —
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly

No dear remembrance keep, —
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly :
Let them weep ! let them weep !

490 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,
For they mind you of their angels in their places,

With eyes meant for Deity ; —
' How long,' they say, ' how long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ?
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,

And your purple shows your path ;
But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence

Than the strong man in his wrath !'

LOVE SONNETS TO ROBERT BROWNING

A selection from forty-three sonnets writtea before her marriage to the
great poet, telling the story of their love. The poetess had been ill, and
almost at death's door, when Robert Browning ' wooed her and won her
back to life.'

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young :

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair ;

And a voice said in mastery while I strove, . . .

' Guess now who holds thee ?' — ' Death !' I said. But, there,

The silver answer rang, . . . ' Not Death, but Love.'

But only three in all God's^universe

Have heard this word thou hast said ; Himself, beside

Thee speaking and me listening ! and replied

One of us ... that was God ! . . . and laid the curse

So darkly on my eyelids as to amerce

My sight from seeing thee, — that if I had died,

The deathweights, placed there, would have signified

Less absolute exclusion. ' Nay ' is worse

From God than from all others, O my friend !

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend ;

Our hands would touch, for all the mountain-bars ; —

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 491

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart !

Unlike our uses, and our destinies.

Our ministering two angels look surprise

On one another, as they strike athwart

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

Than tears, even, can make mine, to ply thy part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

A poor, tired, wandering singer ? . . . singing through

The dark, and, leaning up a cypress tree ?

The chrism is on thine head, — on mine, the dew, —

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

A CHILD ASLEEP

I

How he sleepeth ! having drunken

Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken

Pleasures, to make room for more —
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.

Nosegays ! leave them for the waking :
Throw them earthward where they grew.

Dim are such, beside the breaking

Amaranths he looks unto —
Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden
From the paths they sprang beneath,

Now perhaps divinely holden,

Swing against him in a wreath —
We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath.

Vision unto vision calleth,

While the young child dreameth on.
'Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth

With the glory thou hast won !
Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn, by summer sun.

We should see the spirits ringing

Round thee, — were the clouds away.

'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing,

In the silent-seeming clay —
Singing ! — Stars that seem the mutest, go in music all the way.

492 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

VI

As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour, —

So the Spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.

Shapes of brightness overlean thee, —

Flash their diadems of youth
On the ringlets which half screen thee, —

While thou smilest, . . . not in sooth
Thy smile . . . but the overfair one, dropt from some sethereai mouth.

Haply it is angels' duty,

During slumber, shade by shade
To fine down this childish beauty

To the thing it must be made,
Ere the world shall bring it praises, or the tomb shall see it fade.

Softly, softly ! make no noises !

Now he lieth dead and dumb —
Now he hears the angels' voices

Folding silence in the room —
Now he muses deep the meaning of the Heaven-words as they come.

Speak not ! he is consecrated —
Breathe no breath across his eyes.

Lifted up and separated,

On the hand of God he lies,
In a sweetness beyond touching, — held in cloistral sanctities.

Could ye bless him — father — mother ?

Bless the dimple in his cheek ?
Dare ye look at one another,

And the benediction speak ?
Would ye not break out in weeping, and confess yourselves too weak ?

He is harmless — ye are sinful, —

Ye are troubled — he, at ease :

From his slumber, virtue winful

Floweth outward with increase —
Dare not bless him ! but be blessed by his peace — and go in peace.

493

ROBERT BROWNING

1812-1889

ROBERT BROWNING takes a very high rank amongst the poets of
the Victorian era. He is described by Mr. Shaw as ' the most
singular of our master poets,' and as being ' held by his admirers
the profoundest interpreter of this modern age.'

Mr. Stopford Brooke tells us that ' Keats marks the exhaus-
tion of the impulse which began with Burns and Cowper. There
was no longer now in England any large wave of public thought
or feeling such as could awaken poetry.' He speaks of the poetry
of that age as ' a number of pretty little poems having no
inward fire, no idea, no marked character. They might have
been written by any versifier at any time.' The poems of Mrs.
Hemans, those of L. E. L., and even the earlier efforts of Alfred
Tennyson, he places at this meagre valuation. The date of
which he speaks is 1830. But a new tribe of singers came with
the Oxford Movement and the new Reform agitation. A series
of novel, elements was noticeable in their verse. Social and
political questions, theology, scepticism, metaphysics, and the
analysis of human character, all were to be found in it. Robert
Browning was one of these.

This remarkable poet was born at Camberwell in the year
1812. His father was a clerk in the Bank of England. He
attended school at Peckham, and afterwards attended lectures
at University College, London. Beyond this he seems to have
had no systematic educational training. But he doubtless
learned a great deal from his father, who was himself a man of
considerable genius, who could count poetry and art amongst
his various scholarly attainments. The Browning family came
from the South-West of England. The poet's mother was of
Scottish origin, and her father was a German, a native of Ham-
burg. Robert's paternal grandmother was a Creole from the
West Indies. This intermingling of many nationalities in the
blood of one man of transcendent genius may be in a great
measure accountable for the cosmopolitan characteristics which
are so strongly marked in the man and in his works. Some of
his finest inspirations are said to have come to him as he roamed
in the woods at Dulwich.

494 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

He was brought up amongst the ' Independents,' to which
Nonconformist body his father and mother belonged, and his
education from earliest childhood was subject to religious
influences. He went with his parents to worship, in his
childhood, at York Street Independent Chapel, Walworth,
now called the Robert Browning Hall, and the meeting-place of
a social settlement.1 His father was quick to discern the
early indications of genius which marked his son as superior to
the average schoolboy, and fostered them with a firm though
gentle hand. Robert was grea tly drawn to the study of poetry,
and felt the influence of such works as those of Keats and Shelley,
which were amongst his favourites. He was allowed to choose
his own profession, and he chose to be a poet. As this has
never been at the best of times a lucrative calling, it was fortunate
for him that from the first he was endowed with private
means.

At the age of twenty Browning produced his first volume of
poetry. The name of the work is Pauline, a powerful but some-
what lengthy monologue in blank verse. It caused no stir of
any kind, but was speedily forgotten by the very small ' public '
whose attention it attracted. For two years afterwards
Browning travelled a great deal, chiefly in Italy and Russia, and
in Asolo his name and fame are greatly cherished. In 1835, on
his return to England, he published his dramatic poem Paracelsus.
It differs in style from his earlier work, not being a monologue.
It went a long way towards establishing his fame as a poet, and
had the direct result of obtaining for its author a number of
friends of literary eminence, a circumstance which is always
of value to a young and ambitious writer. Macready, the great
actor, was one of his new admirers, and asked him to write a
play. In response to this request he produced Strafford, a piece
which was acted at Covent Garden Theatre with considerable
success, and published in 1837. In 1841 he produced Sordello,
written, as the author explains, 'for only a few/ During the
next six years, under the general title of Bells and Pome-
granates, there appeared a series of works, embracing Pippa
Passes, King Victor and King Charles, The Return of the Druses,

1 It may be noted as a strange coincidence that both Milton and
Browning, ' the two most virile poets of English literature,' belonged to
the Independents.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 495

A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, Dramatic Romances,
and, in the last volume, Luria and A Soul's Tragedy.

Of all the poems of Browning, none is more widely known,
or more generally popular, than The Pied Piper of Hamelin,
which appeared in a collection called Dramatic Lyrics in 1842.
It finds a place in every collection of pee try compiled for histrionic
amateurs, and is being constantly translated into new languages.
Next in favour for public recitation may be placed the dramatic
romance, How we brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.

In 1850 Christmas Eve and Easter Day appeared. It is a
sermon in verse, and has the broad subject of Christianity as
its theme.

Browning married Elizabeth Barrett, who herself fills a high
place in the history of English literature. This happy event
took place in 1846. Their married life extended over fifteen
years, which were passed in Italy, occasional visits being paid
to England. During this period Browning did not write much,
but his collection of shorter poems, entitled Men and Women,
takes rank amongst his best work. The Ring and the Book
appeared in 1869. For the remaining years of his life the poet
was sufficiently diligent to make up for his long period of com-
parative restfulness. Amongst the fourteen volumes which
'added lustre to his name may be mentioned Fifine at the Fair
(1872), The Inn Album (1875), Parleyings with Certain People
(1887), Balaustion's Adventure (1871), Aristophanes' Apology
(1875), Pacchiarotto (1876), Agamemnon (1877), and The Two
Poets of Croisic (1878).

Browning died on the I2th of December, 1889, in Venice,
and on the same day his last work, Asolando, was published in
London. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, no poet having
been so honoured since Gay had been laid to rest there in 1732.

A modern writer wittily refers to the place which this poet
now occupies in contemporary thought in the following terms :

' Robert Browning has been too long the prey of the " superior
person." His poetry has been seized upon as the private preserve
of the esoteric few. The total originality of his style, his swift
transitions of thought, the unfamiliar scenes and persons of
many of his pieces, and above all his profound and subtle analysis
of soul, have been thrust forward as a fence to ward off the
uninitiated multitude. Most unnecessary emphasis has been

496 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

laid on what is abstruse and recondite in his writings, and the
Pharisees of culture have all but publicly thanked God that they
were not as other men, or even as this poor Philistine who " could
not understand Browning." The Philistine retaliated by declar-
ing that he had no desire to understand a poet so occult, and it
became the fashion to vent small witticisms at Browning's
" obscurity." Happily there have been from the first those
who found in his writings the very light of life.'

Browning is essentially an intellectual poet, but his writings
abound in all the elements of imagination and passion. He has
proved himself a skilful and soulful delineator of the characters
of men and women. With their virtues and their failings he is
alike intimately acquainted, and he paints his pictures of nature
with a master-hand. He has been truly described as one who
embodies more than any other poet the genius of the English
people in the Victorian era. He sets before himself at every
turn the pressing question, What is the aim and the explanation
of human life ? And he has answered it. Here and there his
way of answering calls for more careful, and even for more
serious thought than is required for the understanding of the
more commonplace of his fellows, but the interpretation of the
matter is not always far to find. Though there are preserves
which serve to occupy the deeper learnedness of the ' esoteric '
few,' yet there are simpler passages in abundance which he who-
runs may read.

The study of Browning's poetry is engrossing the attention
of some of the most eminent of modern critics. Some idea of
the scope which it offers may be gathered from a mere statement
of the fact that Mr. Stopford Brooke has recentty published a
most learned and exhaustive treatise on the subject which is
divided into eighteen chapters, each of which deals completety
with the poet in a special phase. ' Parnassus, Apollo's Mount,
has two peaks, and on these, for sixty years, from 1830 to 1890,
two poets sat till their right to these lofty peaks became un-
challenged.' Thus he begins. It is a book that will lead to
much criticism and even difference of opinion, but it will increase
the popularity of Browning, who has not reached his zenith
as yet. ' He is, no doubt, an acquired taste, but once acquired,
that taste is invincible. There is one reason why we think his
pages will be devoured when poets more popular at present have

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 497

been completely left aside. He is more the poet of the spirit
of the times. He is never namby-pamby ; there is nothing in
him about cousin Amy ; no milk-and-water invitations to super-
susceptible Mauds; nothing that is not strenuous, solemn,
suggestive, that does not go to the depths of life and feeling and
emotion ; nothing that has been written for the sake of writing
merely ; nothing solely dictated by the artist to the man.
He writes because there is something vital to write about,' because
he feels a problem and has a solution worth stating.'

These last are the words of an anonymous critic writing on
the subject of Mr. Brooke's new work. We trust we may be
pardoned for quoting the following powerful passage from that
book itself, than which there could be no better vade-mecum for
the serious student of the great poet's utterances.

' The first thing that meets us,' says our author very justly,
' and in his very first poems, is his special view of human nature
and of human life, and of the relation of both to God. It marks
his originality that this view was entirely his own. Ancient
thoughts of course are to be found in it, but his combination
of them is original amongst the English poets. It marks his
genius that he wrought out this conception while he was yet so
young. It is partly shaped in Pauline, it is freely set forth in
Paracelsus, and it marks his consistence of mind that he never
changed it. I do not think he ever added to it or developed
it. It satisfied him when he was a youth and when he was an
old man. That theory needs to be outlined till it is understood.
Browning's poetry cannot be understood or loved as fully as
we should desire to love it. It exists in Pauline, but all its
elements are in solution, uncombined, but waiting the electric
flash which will mix them in due proportion into a composite
substance, having a living form and capable of being used.
That flash was sent through the confused elements of Pauline,
and the result was Paracelsus. . . . The foundation of Brown-
ing's theory is a kind of original sin in us, a natural defective-
ness deliberately imposed on us by God, which prevents us
attaining any absolute success on earth. And the defectiveness
of nature is met by the truth, which, while we aspire, we know,
that God will fulfil all noble desire in a life to come. • We must
aspire then, but at the same time all aspiring is to be contermi-
nous with steady work within our limits. Aspiration to the

32

498 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

perfect is not to make us idle, indifferent to the present, but to
drive us on. Its fusion teaches us, as it urges into action all
our power, what we can and what we cannot do. That is, it
teaches us through the action it engenders what our limits are,
and when we know them the main duties of life rise clear.'

Attention is also justly called by this and other eminent
critics to Browning's expansive treatment of Nature. It is
not in a moment that one realizes how familiar — nay, intimate —
he was with her in all her varying moods, and the many complex
and mysterious phenomena which environ man. ' The morning
and the night, the darkness and the light, the sea and the land-
scape, the placid lagoon, the sedgy swamp, the chirping bird,
the wild tulip, the corals, the red fans of the butterfly, the
serenity and glowing comfort of summer, the fierceness of the
Italian thunderstorm,' — his poems scintillate with references
to these and countless other natural and beauteous features in
the face of that Nature which he loved to depict and enlarge
upon.

In this age of scepticism it is remarkable that our two un-
questionably most eminent poets, Tennyson and Browning, are
on the side of faith, and, moreover, of the Christian faith, though
claiming the liberty to interpret the articles of that faith for
themselves. In Saul Browning says :

'Tis not what man does that exalts him,
But what man would do.

He insists upon this doctrine pertinaciously. In his works
we look in vain for any note of despair ; on the contrary, he
imbues us with the conviction that to him at least everything
is ' worth while.' He ' preaches energy as our life-task, doing
our chosen work with all our might ; he tells us to pierce below
custom and convention, and lay hold of what is true, satisfying,
and abiding in our spirits ; yea, even when we fail in the eyes
of the world he assures us that we may trust God, the Father
of our spirits, to perfect the good honest work we have begun,
in His own best manner, and to renew our youth like the
eagles', if not here, then hereafter. Shockingly unscientific !
Still, unless I completely misunderstand him, so Browning
believes.'

Speaking of the difficulty which some minds encounter in

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 499

their efforts to thoroughly understand Browning, Mr. Roden
Noel, whose able article in the Contemporary Review we have
quoted in the last paragraph, goes on to say :

' The obscurity complained of comes sometimes from the
monologue method, for the one person who is alone before the
reader is talking at, questioning, and replying to other inter-
locutors, whom the author has in his mind, but the reader only
guesses at ; and what they are supposed to say the reader must
divine from the only words he has before him. Enough of all
this, however. It -needs pointing out, if you wish to do as
Matthew Arnold bids you, estimate your classic fairly, and
recognise where he comes short, only in order that you may the
more fully and intelligibly appreciate what is truly admirable
in him and others. For let me say distinctly, with whatever
abatements, Browning is a great English writer to whom we are
very deeply indebted. A fissured volcano rolls you out ashes,
stones, and smoke, along with its flame and burning lava. And
he who never descends into the deeps shall never ascend into the
heights. A dapper dandy, with little mind and little heart, but
perfect self-possession — there is not very much of him to possess
— hands you his neat little gift well polished, say, a new silk
hat nicely brushed. An uncouth great man, with big mind and
big heart, possesses himself not so thoroughly — there is more of
him to possess — and he presents you with his gif t , say, a huge
vase of gems ; but the vase may have a flaw in it, and what
then ? One can only pity the fastidious person with the weak
digestion, whose gorge so rises at some trivial fault, as he deems
it, in the cookery which he cannot enjoy, and be nourished by
good wholesome food when it is offered. Perhaps, because it
lacks olives or truffles, he is for throwing it all away. And as
Mr. Browning's style is sometimes perfectly clear, full of Saxon
force and dignity, his lines and phrases here and there memorable
for their strong, incisive felicity, seldom, though now and then,
even for delicate grace, so his metres are frequently original,
appropriate, vigorous, and perfectly germane to the sense.'

Striking words, too, are those of Edmund Gosse in Robert
Browning : Personalia :

' Long as he lived, he did not live long enough for one of his
ideals to vanish, for one of his enthusiasms to lose its heat ;
to the last, as he so truly said, he never doubted clouds would

32—2

500 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

break, never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
triumph ! The subtlest of writers, he was the simplest of men,
and he learned in serenity what he taught in song.'

' In the case of what is called Browning's obscurity,' says
Mr. G. K. Chesterton in the English Men of Letters series, ' the
question is somewhat (more) difficult to handle. Many people
have supposed Browning to be profound because he was obscure,
and many other people, hardly less mistaken, have supposed him
to be obscure because he was profound. He was frequently
profound, he was occasionally obscure, but as a matter of fact
the two have little or nothing to do with each other. Browning's
dark and elliptical mode of speech, like his love of the grotesque,
was simply a characteristic of his, a trick of his temperament,
and had little or nothing to do with whether what he was express-
ing was profound or superficial.' The same writer instances
the following example of Browning's style as one which might
easily puzzle even one well read in English poetry :

Hobbs hints blue — straight he turtle eats.

Nobbs prints blue — claret crowns his cup.
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats —

Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ?
What porridge had John Keats ?

He contends that the person confronted with this quotation
would say without hesitation that it must indeed be an abstruse,
and indescribable thought which could only be conveyed by
remarks so completely disconnected. But he considers that the
point of the matter is that the thought contained in this amazing
verse is not abstruse or philosophical at all, but is ' a perfectly
ordinary and straightforward comment,' which might have been
made by anyone on an obvious fact of life. ' The whole verse
begins to explain itself if we know the meaning of the word
murex, which is the name of a sea-shell, out of which was made
the celebrated blue dye of Tyre. The poet takes this blue dye
as a simile for a new style in literature, and points out that
Hobbs, Nobbs, etc., obtain fame and comfort by merely using
the dye from the shell, and adds the perfec tly natural comment :

. . . Who fished the murex up ?
What porridge had John Keats ?

True, the connection between porridge and blue dye may
not be apparent to the average reader, or even the average

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 501

critic, but to Mr. Chesterton ' the verse is not subtle, and was
not meant to be subtle, but is a perfectly casual piece of senti-
ment a t the end of a light poem,' and he assures us that Browning
is not obscure because he has such deep things to say, any more
than he is grotesque because he has such new things to say.
He is both of these things primarily because he likes to express
himself in a particular manner.

As is pointed out by Dr. Dowden in his recent work on Brown-
ing, contributed to the Temple Biographies (a work, by the way,
which no student ,of the poet's works should be without), to
attempt at the present time to determine the place of this great
writer in the history of English poetry is perhaps premature.
Yet perhaps no critic has come nearer than Dr. Dowden to a just
and even adequate estimate of Browning's many virtues and
individualities. He does something more than hint that his place
will be second only to that of Tennyson amongst the poets of the
Victorian era. He reminds us that Browning as a poet ' had his
origins in the romantic school of English poetry ; but he came at
a time when the romance of external action and adventure had
exhausted itself, and when it became necessary to carry romance
into the inner world, where the adventures are those of the soul.'
Dealing with the optimismVhich characterizes the poet's ' curious
inquisition of the phenomena of the world of mind,' the learned
critic goes on to say :

' Being a complete and a sane human creature, Browning could
not rest content with the vicious asceticism of the intellect which
calls itself scientific because it refuses to recognise any facts which
are not material and tangible. Science itself, in the true sense of
the word, exists and progresses by ventures of imaginative faith.
And in all matters which involve good and evil, hopes and fears,
in all matters which determine the conduct of life, no rational
person excludes from his view the postulates of our moral nature,
or should exclude the final option of the will. The person whose
beliefs are determined by material facts alone and by the under-
standing unallied with our other powers is the irrational and un-
scientific person. Being a complete and ^sane human creature,
Browning was assured that the visible order of things is part of a
larger order, the existence of which alone makes human life intel-
ligible to the reason.' And again : ' Browning's optimism has been
erroneously ascribed to his temperament. He declared that in

502 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

his personal experience the pain of life outweighed its pleasure.
His optimism was part of the vigorous sanity of his moral nature :
like a reasonable man, he made the happiness which he did not
find. If any person should censure the process of giving objec-
tive validity to a moral postulate, he has only to imagine some
extra-human intelligence making a study of human nature ; to
such an intelligence our moral postulates would be objective facts
and have the value of objective evidence. That whole of which
our life on earth forms a part could not be conceived by Browning
without also being conceived as good.'

Browning is universally acknowledged to be essentially the
poet of poets and of thinkers. His individuality is his chief
charm, though the complete analysis of that individuality be not
yet written. It has been suggested by a recent critic that his
apparent obscurity is not merely a matter of style and expression,
and further, that this may be proved by simply trying, after
mastering the poet's meaning in a difficult passage, to express the
thoughts it contains in clearer and simpler English, when it will
be found that the words used by the poet himself are the very
clearest possible to convey the meaning. ' The real difficulty
lies in gaining the poet's standpoint ; that done, all is simple ;
and this difficulty arises mainly from the subtlety and rapidity
of his thoughts.' From which it is obvious that to many an
intellect even above the average the mind of Browning must
continue to be as a sealed book.

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL

Morning, evening, noon, and night,
' Praise God !' sang Theocrite.

Then to his poor trade he turned,
By which the daily meal was earned.

Hard he laboured, long and well ;
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.

But ever, at each period.

He stopped and sang, ' Praise God !'

Then back again his curls he threw,
And cheerful turned to work anew.

Said Blaise, the listening monk, ' Well done ;
I doubt not thou art heard, my son :

' As well as if thy voice to-day

Were praising God, the Pope's great way.

' This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome
Praises God from Peter's dome.'

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 503

Said Theocrite, ' Would God that I

Might praise Him, that great way, and die 1'

Night passed, day shone,
And Theocrite was gone.

With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day.

God said in heaven, ' Nor day nor night
Now brings the voice of My delight.'

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth,
Spread his wings and sank to earth ;

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell,

Lived there, and played the craftsman well ;

And morning, evening, noon, and night,
Praised God in place of Theocrite.

And from a boy, to youth he grew :
The man put off the stripling's hue :

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay ;

And ever o'er the trade he bent,
And ever lived on earth content.

(He did God's will ; to him, all one
If on the earth or in the sun.)

God said, ' A praise is in Mine ear ;
There is no doubt in it, no fear :

' So sing old worlds, and so

New worlds that from My footstool go.

' Clearer loves sound other ways :
I miss My little human praise.'

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell
The flesh disguise, remained the cell.

'Twas Easter Day : he flew to Rome,
And paused above Saint Peter's dome.

In the tiring-room close by
The great outer gallery,

With his holy vestments dight,
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite

And all his past career
Came back upon him clear,

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,
Till on his life the sickness weighed ;

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer :

And rising from the sickness drear •

He grew a priest, and now stood here.

To the East with praise he turned,
And on his sight the angel burned.

' I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell
And set thee here ; I did not well.

' Vainly I left my angel-sphere,
Vain was thy dream of many a year.

504 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

' Thy voice's praise seemed weak ; it dropped —
Creation's chorus stopped !

' Go back and praise again
The early way, while I remain.

' With that weak voice of our disdain,
Take up creation's pausing strain.

' Back to the cell and poor employ :
Become the craftsman and the boy !'
Theocrite grew old at home ;
A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome.

One vanished as the other died :
They sought God side by side.

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN

A CHILD'S STORY
(WRITTEN FOR, AND INSCRIBED TO, w. M.1 THE YOUNGER)

i

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,

By famous Hanover city ;

The river Weser, deep and wide,

Washes its walls on the southern side ;

A pleasanter spot you never spied ;

But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so

From vermin, was a pity.

II

Rats !
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

in

At last the people in a body

To the Town Hall came flocking :
' 'Tis clear,' cried they, ' our Mayor's a noddy ;

' And as for our Corporation — shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin !
You hope, because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease ?

1 William Macready, son of the actor. The story is based on an old
German legend.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 505

Rouse up, sirs ! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing !'
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

IV

An hour they sate in council,

At length the Mayor broke silence :
' For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,

I wish I were a mile hence !
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain —
I'm sure my poor head aches again,
I've scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap !'
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap !
' Bless us,! cried the Mayor, ' what's that ?'
(With the Corporation as he sat.
Looking little though wondrous fat ;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
' Only a scraping of shoes on the mat ?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat !'

v

' Come in !' — the Mayor cried, looking bigger :
And in did come the strangest figure !
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red,
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in ;
There was no guessing his kith and kin ;
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire.
Quoth one : •' -It's as my great grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tomb-stone 1'

He advanced to the council- table :

And, ' Please your honours,' said he, ' I'm able.

By means of a secret charm, to draw

All creatures living beneath the sun,

That creep, or swim, or fly, or run,
After me so as you never saw !
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole, and toad, and newt, and viper ;
And people call me the Pied Piper.'
(And here they noticed round his neck

A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the self-same cheque ;

And at the scarf's end hung a pipe ;

506 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying

As if impatient to be playing

Upon this pipe, as low it dangled

Over his vesture so old-fangled.)

' Yet,' said he, ' poor piper as I am,

In Tartary I freed the Cham,1

Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats ;
I eased in Asia the Nizam'2

Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats :
And as for what your brain bewilders,

If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders ?'
' One ? fifty thoysand !' — was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stept,

Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept

In his quiet pipe the while ;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled
Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled ;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered ;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling ;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling ;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers

Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives —
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,

Wherein all plunged and perished !
— Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry

(As he, the manuscript he cherished;

To Rat-land home his commentary :
Which was, ' At the first shrill notes of the pipe,
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press's gripe :
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks :
And it seemed as if a voice

(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out, " Oh rats, rejoice !

The world is grown to one vast drysaltery !

1 The Chinese Emperor. a The title of an Indian monarch.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 507

So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,

Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon !"

And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,

All ready staved, like a great sun shone

Glorious scarce an inch before me,

Just as methought it said, " Come, bore me !"

— I found the Weser rolling o'er me.'

VIII

You should have heard the Hamelin people

Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.

' Go,' cried the Mayor, ' and get long poles,

Poke out the nests and block up the holes !

Consult with carpenters and builders,

And leave in our town not even a trace

Of the rats !' — when suddenly up the face

Of the Piper perked in the market-place,

With a, ' First, if you please, my thousand guilders !'

IX

A thousand guilders ! The Mayor looked blue ;

So did the Corporation too.

For council dinners made rare havoc

With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock ;

And half the money would replenish

Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish.

To pay this sum to a wandering fellow

With a gipsy coat of red and yellow !

' Beside,' quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,

' Our business was done at the river's brink ;

We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,

And what's dead can't come to life, I think.

So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink

From the duty of giving you something for drink,

And a matter of money to put in your poke ;

But as for the guilders, what we spoke

Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.

Beside, our losses have made us thrifty ;

A thousand guilders ! Come, take fifty !'

x

The Piper's face fell, and he cried

' No trifling ! I can't wait ; beside !

I've promised to visit by dinnertime \

Bagdat, and accept the prime.

Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in,

For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen,

Of a nest of scorpions no survivor :

With him I proved no bargain-driver ;

With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver !

And folks who put me in a passion

May find me pipe to another fashion.'

XI

' How ?' cried the Mayor, ' d'ye think I'll brook

Being worse treated than a Cook ?

Insulted by a lazy ribald

With idle pipe and vesture piebald ?

You threaten us, fellow ? Do your^ worst,

Blow your pipe there till you burst !'

508 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

XII

Once more he slept into the street ;

And to his lips again

Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane ;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning

Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling.
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running,
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood

As if they were changed into blocks of wood,

Unable to move a step, or cry

To the children merrily skipping by —

And could only follow with the eye

That joyous crowd at the Piper's back.

But how the Mayor was on the rack,

And the wretched Council's bosoms beat,

As the Piper turned from the High Street

To where the Weser rolled its waters

Right in the way of their sons and daughters !

However he turned from South to West,

And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,

And after him the children pressed ;

Great was the joy in every breast.

' He never can cross that mighty top !

He's forced to let the piping drop,

And we shall see our children stop !'

When, lo, as they reached the mountain's side,

A wondrous portal opened wide,

As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed ;

And the Piper advanced and the children followed.

And when all were in to the very last,

The door in the mountain-side shut fast.

Did I say, all ? No ! One was lame,

And could not dance the whole of the way ;

And in after years, if you would blame

His sadness, he was used to say, —

' It's dull in our town since my playmates left !

I can't forget that I'm bereft

Of all the pleasant sights they see,

Which the Piper also promised me ;

For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,

Joining the town and just at hand,

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,

And flowers put forth a fairer hue,

And everything was strange and new ;

The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,

And their dogs outran our fallow deer,

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 509

And honey-bees had lost their stings,

And horses were born with eagles' wings ;

And just as I became assured

My lame foot would be speedily cured,

The music stopped, and I stood still,

And found myself outside the hill,

Left alone against my will,

To go now limping as before,

And never hear of that country more !'

Alas, alas for Hamelin !

There came into many a burgher's pate

A text which says that Heaven's Gate

Opes to the rich at as easy rate
As the needle's eye takes a camel in !
The mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,

Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,

And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavour.
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never

Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear :
' And so long after what happened here

On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six ' :
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper's Street —
Where anv one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern

To shock with mirth a street so solemn ;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church-window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away ;
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Bmnswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers

Of scores out with all men — especially pipers !

And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice,

If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise !

5io

.'

The gray sea and the long black land ;
And the yellow half-moon large and low ;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach ;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears ;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each !

PARTING AT MORNING

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI

I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives
First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves
The world ; and, vainly favoured, it repays
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze
By no change of its large calm front of snow.
And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know,
He cannot have perceived, that changes ever
At his approach ; and, in the lost endeavour
To live his life, has parted, one by one,
With all a flower's true graces, for the grace
Of being but a foolish mimic sun,
With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount
As over many a land of theirs its large
Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe
Is reared, and still with old names, fresh ones vie,
Each to its proper praise and own account :
Men call the Flower the Sunflower, sportively.

ii

Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look
Across the waters to this twilight nook,
— The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook !

Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed T
Go ! — saying ever as thou dost proceed,
That I, French Rudel, choose for my device
A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 511

Before its idol. See ! These inexpert

And hurried ringers could not fail to hurt

The woven picture ; 'tis a woman's skill

Indeed ; but nothing baffled me, so, ill

Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed

On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees

On my flower's breast as on a platform broad :

But, as the flower's concern is not for these

But solely for the sun, so men applaud

In vain this Rudel, he is not looking here

But to the East — the East ! Go say this, Pilgrim dear !

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT
TO AIX.'1

[16-]

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he ;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ;

' Good speed !' cried the watch, a.s the gate-bolts undrew

' Speed !' echoed the wall to us galloping through ;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest.

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place ;
I turned in my saddle, and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew neat

Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear ;

At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see ;

At Diiffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be ;

\nd from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,

oo, Joris broke silence with, ' Yet there is time !'

At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun.
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray :

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track ;
And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance !
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

1 A purely imaginary episode. There is no basis in fact.

512 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, ' Stay spur !
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix ' — for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ;

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,

And ' Gallop,' gasped Joris, ' for Aix is in sight !'

' How they'll greet us !' — and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,

Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer ;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is — friends flocking round

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground ;

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

THROUGH THE METIDJA TO ABD-EL-KADR

1842

As I ride, as I ride,

With a full heart for my guide,

So its tide rocks my side,

As I ride, as I ride,

That, as I were double-eyed,

He, in whom our Tribes confide,

Is descried, ways untried

As I ride, as I ride.

ii

As I ride, as I ride,
To our Chief and his Allied,
Who dares chide my heart's pride
As I ride, as I ride "?

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 513

Or are witnesses denied —
Through the desert waste and wide
Do I glide unespied
As I ride, as I ride ?

As I ride, as I ride,

When an inner voice has cried,

The sands slide, nor abide

(As I ride, as I ride)

O'er each visioned homicide

That came vaunting (has he lied ?)

To reside — where he died,

As I ride, as I ride.

IV

As I ride, as I ride,

Ne'er has spur my swift horse plied,

Yet his hide, streaked and pied,

As I ride, as I ride,

Shows where sweat has sprung and dried

— Zebra-footed, ostrich-thighed —

How has vied stride with stride

As I ride, as I ride !

As I ride, as I ride,

Could I loose what Fate has tied,

Ere I pried, she should hide

(As I ride, as I ride)

All that's meant me : satisfied

When the Prophet and the Bride

Stop veins I'd have subside

As I ride, as I ride !

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD

1832-1904

EDWIN ARNOLD was the second son of Robert Coles Arnold, a
country gentleman and Justice of the Peace for the counties of
Kent and Sussex. He was born at Gravesend on the loth of
June, 1832. He received his early education at the King's
School, Rochester. On leaving that institution he proceeded to
King's College, London, from whence in due course he won a
scholarship at University College, Oxford. In 1853 he won the
Newdigate Prize for a poem entitled The Feast of Belshazzar, an
exercise which ' displayed a vigour of thought and a glow of
imagination, which combined with an astonishingly mature

33

514 A HISTORY OF BRITISH] POETRY

power of expression to raise it far above the level of those usually
undistinguished academic exercises, and to justify, in his case,,
the high hopes which too many of the Newdigate prize-winners
are fated to disappoint. The Feast of Belshazzar can be read
with pleasure and admiration at the present day, and takes rank
with the composition of Bishop Heber, of Dean Milman, and of
his namesake, the late Mr. Matthew Arnold, among the severely
limited number of these productions which on their own merits
deserve to live.' In the same year he was selected to deliver the
address to Lord Derby on his installation as Chancellor of the
University of Oxford. At this time he was only twenty-one years
of age. In the following year he graduated B.A., with honours.

After taking his degree he was appointed second master at.
King Edward's School, Birmingham, a post which he relin-
quished in 1856, when he was chosen as Principal of the Govern-
ment Sanscrit College at Poona. This appointment determined
the direction of his talents. He held the position throughout the
Indian Mutiny, and resigned it in 1861. He has given in his
writings many brilliant and graphic descriptions of his Indian
experiences, and there can be no doubt that the years which he
spent in the East left their mark on his poetic genius, his political
views, and his general literary character. ' It was there and then
that he saturated himself with Oriental thought and learning,,
and that a style, naturally rich in sensuous imagery, acquired an
almost Oriental opulence of colour ; and it was there and then
that he conceived that sympathy with the characteristic virtues
of the higher type of Eastern character — its dignity, its patience,
its devout stoicism and resignation — which so powerfully in-
fluenced his attitude in some of the great political controversies,
of recent years.'

The strong tendency towards poetical exercises, which had
shown itself with such marked success in his student days, was
not allowed to languish. During the three years which elapsed
between his leaving Oxford and his acceptance of the post at
Poona he published Griselda : a Drama, and Poems : Narrative
and Lyrical. In 1860, while still at Poona, he published a volume
on Education in India, and in 1862 a work on The Marquis of
Dalhousie's Administration. His translations included the Hera
and Leander of Musasus, the Book of Good Counsel from the:
Hitopadesa, and in 1877 he produced a transliteral grammar of

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 515

the Turkish language. The remainder of his work was mainly
original poetry and an amazing amount of anonymous journal-
istic writing, amongst the latter being, according to his own
estimate, about 10,000 leading articles in the Daily Telegraph,
with which paper he was connected for forty years. In 1875 he
published The Indian Song of Songs, which is a metrical para-
phrase from the Sanscrit of the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva. His
masterpiece, The Light of Asia, came in 1879. This beautiful
epic upon the life and teaching of Buddha has passed through
more than sixty editions in England and eighty in America, and
has been translated into many languages. Oliver Wendell Holmes
said of it :

' Its tone is so lofty that there is nothing with which to com-
pare it but the New Testament ; it is full of beauty, now pictur-
esque, now pathetic, now rising into the noblest realms of
thought and aspiration ; it finds language penetrating, fluent,
elevated, impassioned, musical always, in which to clothe its
varied thoughts and sentiments.'

This is high, perhaps exaggerated, praise, but the fact that the
poem is said to have inspired even Buddhists with a nobler con-
ception of their own faith shows that there is in the work the soul
of genius.

In this work he found the ideal subject for his complex poetic
genius, the one subject calculated to call both his reflective and
imaginative powers into fullest operation. A modern critic,
writing in the journal which he served so well, says of it :

' His chosen theme was solemn with the mysticism and radiant
with the colour of the East ; and it is hard to say which of the
two elements enter the more deeply into the work. For The
Light of Asia does not more truly live by the splendour of its
descriptive imagery than by the intensity of its religious feeling ;
and it was by this twofold aesthetic and spiritual charm that it
won the suffrages of two such widely different classes of readers.
To the artistic few it commended itself by its brilliant art ; to
that vast and " serious " multitude of English-speaking people
in either hemisphere for whom poetry, considered as such, has
no meaning or message, its profoundly moving picture of the
Indian Messiah made irresistible appeal. The success of the
poem was as instant and triumphant as it was well-deserved. It
was hailed alike by Asia and by America, no less than by Europe,

33—2

516 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

as the noblest presentment ever given in Western poetry of the
Master on whose teachings and example is founded the faith of
more than one-third of the human race.'

Another contribution to the flood of eulogy which is still fresh
in the public mind is the following passage from the pen of
Mr. Arthur Waugh, whose praise, however, is not unqualified :

' Of course, it is as the poet of the Indian faith that Sir Edwin
Arnold made his reputation, and it may safely be said that few
single poems of his generation have enjoyed so wide a vogue as
The Light of Asia. Many things helped in its success ; but,
above all other considerations, it was peculiarly happy in the
moment of its conception. It appeared at a time when the con-
cerns of our Indian Empire were conspicuously before the public ;
and it taught the insular British mind (or the insular British
mind believed that it taught it, which is much the same thing)
to sympathize wi th an alien religion, and to trace in its philosophy
a singular likeness to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

' It was immediately and amazingly successful. Thousands
of people, to whom its rather turgid rhetoric must have been a
mystical confusion, added it to their bookshelves, as " a book
that nobody should be without," and it is safe to say that a
hundred times more copies were bought than read. Those who
really care for poetry must confess, however, that its qualities
are poetically superficial. It owes almost everything to the
splendour of its subject, and, while it certainly makes full and
even brilliant use of certain aspects of that subject, the use is,
after all, artistically elementary. Its warmth, its colour, the rich
mystical imagery and luscious opulence of many of its passages
are indisputable ; but, as a study of Buddhism, it is essentially
on the surface. It is, as was inevitable, an outsider's study, a
piece — shall we say ? — of glittering journalism, disguised in a
brocaded robe of decorative verse.'

The Light of the World, though a poem of much power and
beauty, was not so signal a success as its predecessor, The Light
of Asia. In it he sought to do for Christianity what he had done
for Buddhism. It may even be said that, to the many admirers
of his previous works, it came as a disappointment. In it
familiar thoughts gain nothing by their new statement, and
critics are agreed that the peculiar lusciousness of style seems
out of place.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 517

In the year 1881 Arnold published a volume of Oriental verse,
entitled Indian Poetry, and in 1883 Pearls of the Faith, or Islam's
Rosary : being the Ninety -nine Beautiful Names of Allah, with
Comments in Verse. This last was a series of short poems ' exe-
cuted, for the most part, in a less finished style of workmanship
than his longer Oriental efforts, but many of them admirably
vigorous versifications of Moslem text and legend.' He subse-
quently produced With Sa'di in the Garden, a poem founded on
a chapter from the Bostdn of the famous Persian poet Sa'di ;
Indian Idylls, from 'the Sanscrit of the Mahabhata poems ; In
my Lady's Praise, a collection of elegiac pieces, dedicated to the
memory of the late Lady Arnold ; and Poems, National and Non-
Oriental.

Sir Edwin Arnold produced altogether about thirty volumes
of poetry and prose, the result chiefly of his Oriental studies and
his travels in many parts of the world. Japan came next to India
in his affections. Of it he said : ' Japan is great, both morally
and intellectually,' and of its people that they are ' a gentle and
a noble race.' He was thrice married. His first wife was English,
the second American, and the third, who survives him, was Tama
Kurokawa, a Japanese lady educated in England. The poet's
collection of foreign orders, conferred on him by potentates in
recognition of his literary achievements, was quite unique. He
was also honoured by his Sovereign with the Companionship of
the Star of India, and a Knight Commandership of the Indian
Empire.

Arnold died on Thursday, the 25th of March, 1904. He had
been for some time in failing health, was nearly blind, and
partially paralyzed, but he maintained his cheerfulness and his
interest in life and in literature until the last. He was always an
optimist. He sings, in The Light of the World :

Our worst of woes

Is like the foolish anguish of the babe,
Whereat the mother, loving most, smiles most.

In accordance with his own wish, Sir Edwin Arnold's remains
were cremated. The funeral service took place at Brookwood
on Monday, the 28th of March, 1904. After the cremation his
ashes were enclosed in an urn and finally placed (again in
accordance with his expressed wish) in a niche in the wall of the
chapel of University College, Oxford. _i

5i8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM ' THE LIGHT OF ASIA.' BOOK V

Thus would he muse from noontide — when the land

Shimmered with heat, and walls and temples danced

In the reeking air — till sunset, noting not

The blazing globe roll down, nor evening glide

Purple and swift, across the softened fields ;

Nor the still coming of the stars, nor throb

Of drum-skins in the busy town, nor screech

Of owl and night-jar ; wholly wrapt from self

In keen unravelling of the threads of thought

And ^teadfast pacing of life's labyrinths.

Thus would he sit till midnight hushed the world,

Save where the beasts of darkness in the brake

Crept and cried out, as fear and hatred cry,

As lust and avarice and anger creep

In the black jungles of man's ignorance.

Then slept he for what space the fleet moon asks

To swim a tenth part of her cloudy sea ;

But rose ere the False-dawn, and stood again

Wistful on some dark platform of his hill,

Watching the sleeping earth with ardent eyes

And thoughts embracing all its living things,

While o'er the waving fields that murmur moved

Which is the kiss of Morn waking the lands,

And in the east that miracle of Day

Gathered and grew. At first a dusk so dim

Night seems still unaware of whispered dawn,

But soon — before the jungle-cock crows twice —

A white verge clear, a widening, brightening white

High as the herald-star, which fades in floods

Of silver, warming into pale gold, caught

By topmost clouds, and flaming on their rims

To fervent golden glow, flushed from the brink

With saffron, scarlet, crimson, amethyst ;

Whereat the sky burns splendid to the blue,

And robed in raiment of glad light, the King

Of Life and Glory cometh !

FROM ' LIGHT OF THE WORLD '

Thou knowest of the Birth, and how there fell

Lauds out of Heaven to hail Him, and high songs

Of peace, and comfortable years to come ;

And of the bitter Prince ; the murdered babes,

The cry of childless mothers. How they fled —

Mary and Joseph — to the Land of Nile,

By Hebron and by Ziph, sore-toiling south

Over the Brook of Egypt. On their way

'Tis told the palm-trees stooped to give them fruit ;

That dragons of the Desert slid their scales —

Shamed to be deadly — into cleft and den ;

That robbers, by the road, flung spear and sword

Down on the sand, and laid their fierce brows there.

Convinced of evil by mere majesty

Of Babe and Mother. And dry Roses bloomed

Back into beauty, when their garments brushed

The Rose-bush ; and a wayside sycamore

Beneath whose leaves they rested, moved his boughs

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 519

From noon till evening with the moving sun

To make them shade. And, coming nigh to On —

Where stands the house of Ra, — its mighty god,

Cut in black porphyry, prodigious, feared,

Fell from his seat.

MAY

Who cares on the land to stay
Wasting the wealth of a day ?

The dull fields leave

For the meadows that heave,
And away to the sea ! — away !

To the meadows far out on the deep,
Whose ploughs are the winds which sweep

The green furrows high

When into the sky
The silvery foam-bells leap.

At sea — my Bark ! at sea,

With the winds, and the wild clouds, and me.

The low shore soon

Will be down with the moon,
And none on the waves but we.

Thy wings are abroad, my Bird !
And the sound of their speed is heard.

The scud flashes west,

And the gull to her nest,
But they lag far behind us, my Bird !

White as my true-love's neck

Are the sails that shadow thy deck ;

And thine image wan,

Like a stream-mirrored swan,
Lies dim on thy dancing track.

On ! on, with a swoop and a swirl,
High over the clear wave's curl ;

Under thy prow

Like a fairy now
Make the blue water bubble with pearl !

Lo, yonder, my Lady ! the light ;
'Tis the last of" the land in sight !

Look once — then, away,

Bows soaked in the spray,
Lighted on by star-lamps of the Night.

DECEMBER

In fretwork of frost, and spangle of snow,

Unto his end the Year cloth wend ;

And sad for some the days did go,

And glad for some was beginning and end ;

But, sad or glad, grieve not for his death,

Mournfully counting your measures of breath,

Ye that before the stars began

Were promise of woman and seed of man ;

Ye that are older than Aldebaran !

520 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

It was but a ring put about the sun,
One passing dance of our planet done,
One step in the infinite minuet
Which the white worlds pace, to a music set
By life immortal and love divine ;
Whereof is struck, in our three score and ten.
One chord of the harmony, fair and fine,
Of that which maketh us women and men.
In fretwork of frost and spangle of snow,
Sad or glad, let the Old Year go !

FROM THE PERSIAN OF SA'DI'S 'BOSTAN'
A ROSE OF THE ' GARDEN OF FRAGRANCE '

Of hearts disconsolate see the state :

To bear a breaking heart may prove thy fate.

Help to be happy those thine aid can bless,
Mindful of thine own day of helplessness.

If thou at others' doors need'st not to pine,
In thanks to Allah drive no man from thine.

Over the orphan's path protection spread !
Pluck out his heart-grief, lift his drooping head.

When with his neck bent low thou spiest one,
Kiss not the lifted face of thine own son !

Take heed these go not weeping. Allah's throne
Shakes to the sigh the orphan breathes alone.

There was a merchant, who, upon his way —
Meeting one fatherless and lamed — did stay

To draw the thorn which pricked his foot ; and passed
And 'twas forgot ; and the man died at last :

But in a dream the Prince of Khojand spies
That man again, walking in Paradise ;

Walking and talking in the Blessed Land,

And what he said the Prince could understand :

For he said this : plucking the heavenly posies,
' Ajab ! that one thorn made me many Roses !'

WILLIAM MORRIS
1834-1896

WILLIAM MORRIS was born at Walthamstow on the 24th of March,
1834. He was educated first at Maryborough, whence he pro-
ceeded to Oxford. ' As a writer,' says Mr. Robert Steele in
an exhaustive sketch contributed to Mr. Chambers' Cyclopedia
of English Literature, ' Morris belongs to the Romantic school at

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 521

its best and healthiest. The pre-Raphaelite movement, of which
his work is but the direct expression, is a phase of the great
romantic development which, arising in our country, finding its
expressions in the poems of Ossian, the Percy Ballads, and the
works of Chatterton, spread to the Continent of Europe, made
itself deeply felt in Germany and in Western Europe generally,
while pursuing in England a course freed from some of the
excesses of disordered imagination which characterized it
abroad.'

Morris began his literary career as a contributor to the Oxford
and Cambridge Magazine. The tone of his poetry was greatly
influenced by a careful study of the works of Tennyson and
Browning, and he rapidly developed into something more than
a skilful versifier. The best of his earlier poems are The Defence
of Guenevere, King Arthur's Tomb, The Blue Closet, and the Tune
of Seven Towers.

Some years elapsed between the publication of these and Jason,
' a poem originally designed to take its place in the framework
of The Earthly Paradise, but which had outgrown in the making
the limits of that scheme.' Then followed The Earthly Paradise
itself, a collection of poems with which the name of Morris is
chiefly associated in the mind of the student. These poems,
which ' mark the second stage in his development as a writer,'
are very superior in quality and cultured in tone. ' The happiness
of epithet and of , local colouring, the picturesque detail and
the appropriate phrase which give life and individuality to his
pictures, are for the most part known only by their effects and
only fully appreciated in the retrospect.'

In 1872 Morris published a poem entitled Love is Enough,
which, though not so favourabty spoken of as many of his other
works, has many good qualities all its own. One critic has dwelt
upon the skill with which the difficult Middle English metres are
handled, praising it to the extent of saying that it ' enlarges the
limits of English verse.'

Morris paid some visits to Iceland, and this experience re-
sulted in a third period of development. He issued a number of
translations from Icelandic literature, and amongst them an epic
entitled Sigurd the Volsung. This is accounted his finest poetical
work. A still further development of his genius is marked by
translations from the JEneid, the Odyssey, and the work of

522 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Beowulf. Speaking of his translation of the Odyssey, Mr. Watts-
Dunton says :

' The two specially Homeiic qualities — those, indeed, which
set Homer apart from all other poets — are eagerness and dignity.
That Tennyson could have given us the Homeric dignity his
magnificent rendering of a famous fragment of the Iliad shows.
Chapman's translations show that the eagerness also can be
caught. Morris could not have given the dignity of Homer, but
then, while Tennyson has left us but a few lines speaking with
the dignity of the Iliad, Morris gave us a literal translation of the
entire Odyssey, which, though it missed the Homeric dignity,
secured the eagerness as completely as Chapman's free and easy
paraphrase.'

The influence of Morris is felt not merely in the field of litera-
ture, but perhaps even more fully in those of art and politics. He
died on the 3rd of October, 1896.

FROM ' THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON '

I know a little garden close
Set thick with lily and red rose.
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillared house is there,
And though the apple-boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
Her feet upon the green grass trod,
And I beheld them as before.

There comes a murmur from the shore,
And in the place two fair streams are,
Drawn from the purple hills afar,
Drawn down unto the restless sea ;
The hills whose flowers ne'er fed the bee
The shore no ship has ever seen,
Still beaten by the billows green,
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
That maketh me both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskilled to find,
And quick to lose what all men seek.

Yet tottering as I am, and weak,
Still have I left a little breath
To seek within the jaws of death
An entrance to that happy place,
To seek the unforgotten face
Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me
Anigh the murmuring of the sea. j(

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 523

COVENTRY PATMORE

1823-1896

COVENTRY PATMORE was born at Woodford, in Essex. For
some years he was assistant librarian at the British Museum.
His first volume of poetry appeared in 1844, but it was severely
criticised. In 1853 he published another volume entitled
Tamerton Church Tower. This was well received, a fact which
encouraged him to publish The Angel in the House, the poem
by which he is now' best remembered. His subsequent works
include The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes (1877), Amelia (1878),
Principle in Art (1889), Religio Poeta (1893), and The Rod, the
Root, and the Flower (1895).

THE YEAR

The crocus, while the days are dark,

Unfolds its saffron sheen ;
At April's touch, the crudest bark

Discovers gems of green.

Then sleep the seasons, full of might ;

While slowly swells the pod,
And rounds the peach, and in the night

The mushroom bursts the sod.

SCOTTISH POETS

JAMES HOGG

1770-1835

JAMES HOGG, better known to fame as ' The Ettrick Shepherd,'
was born in the vale of Ettrick, in the county of Selkirk. His
date of baptism is given in the parish register as December gth,
1770. He was descended from a family of shepherds. In early
childhood he was employed as a cowherd, until he was suffi-
ciently experienced to be entrusted with a flock of sheep. His
first appearance as a poet was in 1801, when he published a
small volume of songs. He was introduced by the son of his
employer to Sir Walter Scott, and gave the great poet some
help in the collecting of old ballads for the Border Minstrelsy.
In 1807 he published another volume of poems entitled The

524 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Mountain Bard. After a period of sheep-farming in the island
of Harris, which proved unsuccessful, he went to Edinburgh,
and tried to live by means of his literary talents.

Amongst the many volumes which issued from his pen we
may mention The Forest Minstrel (1810) ; The Spy ; The Queen's
Wake (1813) ; Mador of the Moor, a poem in the Spenserian
stanza ; The Pilgrims of the Sun, in blank verse ; The Poetic
Mirror, and The Hunting of Badlewe.

As is the case with most self-educated men, he was vain of his
position and attainments, and not without reason. But in his
vanity there was ' a bonhomie and a simplicity utterly different
from the insolence of pride. He was hospitable, liberal, and
generous in disposition, upright and straightforward in prin-
ciple.'

His works — prose compositions, chiefly tales, ' rough and racy/
as Lord Byron termed them, and his poetry — amount to about
thirty volumes in all, besides a vast number of contributions to
annuals and other journals. His poetical works consist chiefly
of songs, ballads, and elfin legends. He was at home in the
fairy world, and it is in such fantastic and airy regions that his
talent is most conspicuous. The Queen's Wake is undoubtedly
the most notable of his poems, and is exquisitely wrought out.
It comprises a series of lyric legends, supposed to be sung before
Mary Queen of Scots at a wake at Holyrood Palace by a number
of Scottish minstrels.

He died on the 2ist of November, 1835, and was buried near
his birthplace in Ettrick Churchyard. His widow received a
royal pension in 1853.

Hogg has been described by Professor Ferrier as the greatest
poet next to Burns that has ever sprung from the bosom of
the common people — an opinion which is shared by not a few
eminent critics. Jeffrey speaks of him as a poet in the highest
acceptation of the term. The following forcible criticism,
eulogistic with but slight reservation, is from the latest volume
of Mr. Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Literature :

' The truly amazing thing about the shepherd is that, with
his rollicking, boisterous, and almost coarse humour, and his
notorious defects of taste, he nevertheless sustained unbroken
nights in almost pure ether. He could abandon himself entirely
to the genius of local and legendary story ; he certainly proved

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 525

himself at home in scenes of visionary splendour and unimagin-
able purity and bliss. His Kilmeny is one of the finest of fairy-
tales ; passages in the Pilgrims of the Sun have much of the
same ethereal beauty. Akin to this feature in Hogg's poetry
is the spirit of many of his songs — a lyrical flow that is some-
times inexpressibly sweet and musical, and is withal spontaneous
and natural. He wanted art to construct a fable, and taste to
make the most of his fertility in ideas and imagery ; but few
poets impress us more with the feeling of direct inspiration,
or convince us so strongly that poetry is indeed an art unteach-
able and untaught.'

FROM 'THE QUEEN'S WAKE'
KILMENY'S VISIONS IN FAIRY-LAND

She saw a sun on a summer sky,
And clouds of amber sailing by,
A lovely land beneath her lay,
And that land had glens and mountains gray ;
And that land had valleys and hoary piles,
And merled seas, and a thousand isles ;
Its fields were speckled, its forests green.
And its lakes were all of the dazzling sheen,
Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay,
The sun, and the sky, and the cloudlet gray.

*****
She saw the corn wave on the vale ;
She saw the deer run down the dale ;
She saw the plaid and the broad claymore,
And the brows that the badge of freedom bore :
And she thought she had seen the land before.

She saw a lady sit on a throne,
The fairest that ever the sun shone on !
A lion licked her hand of milk,
And she held him in a leash of silk ;
A leifu maiden stood at her knee,
With a silver wand and a melting e'e,
Her sovereign shield, till love stole in.
And poisoned all the fount within.

THE SKYLARK

Bird of the wilderness,

Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea 1

Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place —
O to abide in the desert with thee !

Wild is thy lay and loud,

Far in the downy cloud,
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth ;

Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying ?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

526 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

O'er fell and fountain sheen,
O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,
Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away !
Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place —

O to abide in the desert with thee !

SIR WALTER SCOTT
1771-1832

WALTER SCOTT was born in Edinburgh on the 15 th of August,
1771. He was descended from a branch of the noble house of
Buccleugh, one of the most ancient and illustrious of the Border
families. His lather was a Writer to the Signet, and the first of
the family who followed a professional calling. Owing to a
serious illness from which the poet suffered during his infancy,
his right leg was affected with lameness, which somewhat dis-
figured him during the rest of his life. He was sent, for the sake
of his health, to live for awhile in the country, the place chosen
for this purpose being his grandfather's farm, Sandyknowe, on
the banks of the Tweed. At the age of six he was brought back
to his home in the capital, and was sent to the High School.
From thence he proceeded in due course to the University of
Edinburgh, and later became apprenticed to his father. When
he had attained the age of twenty-one he was called to the
Scottish Bar in the Court of Sessions.

' To realize the true greatness of the subject of this memoir,'
says a writer in the ' Canterbury Poets ' Series, ' it is necessary
to have at least some superficial knowledge of Scotland as it was
at the close of the eighteenth century. Small country as it is,
it was then more of a terra incognita to Southerners, and so far
as the Highlands were concerned, to the Lowland Scotch them-
selves, than nowadays is Australia or New Zealand. The High-
lands constituted, to all intents and purposes, a separate State,
in many respects a hostile one ; for though the days of Roderick
Dhu were over, there still lingered among the Lowland peasantry

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 527

a deep suspicion and dislike, mingled with angry contempt, of
their Celtic neighbours. We are told that there is no such race
extant as the pure Celtic ; but howsoever this may be, we are
accustomed to regard as Celts the Gaelic-speaking populations
of Ireland and Scotland ; and it was this Celtic survival that
was steadily dwindling away when the genius of one man
arrested its retrogression as with the wave of a magic wand.
Then came the Peninsular campaign, where the clansmen
charged on the battlefields side by side with the men of Clydes-
dale and the Lothiahs, until a time came when an Armstrong
or Elliott, a Morton or Maxwell, called themselves, in common
with the Camerons, Macleods, and Macdonalds, simply Scotch-
men, instead of Borderers or Gaels. It is just about a century1
since Scott, while an apprentice-at-law in Edinburgh, having
to go on a legal errand into the Highlands in connection with
some non-rent-paying Maclarens, was accompanied, as a matter
of course, by an escort of a sergeant and six soldiers. That the
escort proved quite unnecessary is not to the point ; the fact
of its having been considered advisable being quite eloquent
enough a commentary on the civilization of the then vaguely
known districts lying west and north of that famous pass in
the Trossachs, out of which there-was not so long before Scott's
time but one way of issue — namely, by a rude ladder down a
precipitate slope, a ladder compact of branches and roots of
trees.' '. f>-

The same writer gives another striking instance of the very
rude and primitive state of things which existed in these regions
in the earlier years of the eighteenth century. He tells us that
when the future poet and novelist drove in a small gig through
Liddersdale, in the southland,, his progress attracted much
wondering attention, for never before had the rustics of this
uncivilized quarter seen any wheeled vehicle pass along their
stony braes and rough moorland paths. Bearing this in mind,
he argues that it is easier to realize that the famous old Border
reiver, Auld Wat o' Harden, was not a very remote ancestor of
Scott. Auld Wat was the husband of the famous Mary, the
' Flower of Yarrow,' who, upon a certain occasion, finding that
her larder was short of victuals for the dinner-table, served up
a dish for the delectation of her expectant husband and his
1 This extract was written in 1885.

528 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

guests which, upon the removal of the cover, disclosed to view
a pair of spurs. The trick was played as a strong hint that if
a man will not hunt neither shall he eat. It was this Wat's
great-grandson who was popularly known as ' Beardie,' from
the long beard which he wore in memory of the execution of
Charles I. He, again, was great-grandfather of Walter Scott, the
greatest of Scottish writers, whether considered as a novelist or
a poet.

Though Scott's fame as a poet is unquestionably somewhat
dwarfed by his greater reputation as a novelist, he is clearly
entitled to a place in the front rank of British writers of verse.
To the inborn genius which marked him out for distinction
under any circumstances he added a romantic temperament
which he fostered and fed with the material which the imagina-
tions of the ancients have placed within the reach of the diligent
searcher. It is needless to say that he loved the ever-increasing
store of books in his library almost, if not quite as much, as he
loved the wild and glorious scenery of his native country. His
inspiration came from both. To the lamp and the easy-chair,
to the stillness of the house before the other inmates were yet
astir, to the murmuring of the brooklet, the humming of the
bees, the singing of the birds — to each and all are we indebted
for the liquid and learned loveliness of the lines which came from
his pen. Spenser, Boccaccio, and Froissart were his delight.

Walter Scott was disappointed in his first love, but he con-
soled himself, in 1797, by leading to the altar a lady of French
extraction, with whom he had formed a firm friendship during
a tour in the Lake District of Cumberland. Whether he did not
take kindly to his profession, or his profession did not take
kindly to him, will perhaps never be fully known, but he cer-
tainly was not a success as a lawyer, and that calling, which
never brought him more than £200 a year, was soon abandoned
for more congenial and lucrative pursuits.

In 1799 Scott was appointed, through the influence of his
kinsman, the Duke of Buccleugh, to the post of Sheriff-Deputy
of Selkirkshire, which is poetically known as Ettrick Forest.
This office brought him an annual income of /3oo. His wife
was possessed of some private means, and so they were enabled
to establish themselves in a farm, called Ashestiel, on the banks
of the Tweed, not far from Yarrow. This house, in which Scott

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 529

lived for the greater part of eight years, ' stood in an old-fashioned
garden fenced with holly hedges, and on a high bank, which was
divided from the river he loved so well only by a narrow strip of
green meadow.' Here he devoted himself entirely to literary
work, with marked success, having already drawn attention to
his genius by the publication of a number of exquisite ballads
and three volumes of the Border Minstrelsy. In the years which
followed upon this move some of his best poems were written.
In 1811 he purchased the estate on Tweedside, where he subse-
quently built the baronial residence of Abbotsford. It was thus
that he at length realized his cherished dream of becoming a
Scottish laird or landowner.

It was at Ashestiel that the Lay of the Last Minstrel, his first
great poem, was completed. It was published in January, 1805.
The poem presents to us in language the most dignified and
well-measured a majestic picture of the wild Border life of days
gone by. The hoary-headed minstrel, with his harp as the only
companion and comforter of his weary journeyings, takes rank
as one of the most superb creations of poetical literature. The
poet himself says that the interest of this poem depends mainly
upon the style, and though this may be thought to imply a
comparison which is unfair to the subject, yet it is just in view
of the fact that the style is absolutely faultless. The poem is
conspicuous amongst the writings even of Scott himself for
variety of versification, depth of feeling, and ' glow of inspira-
tion.' Its entire success immediately secured for its author a
high reputation as a poet.

Marmion, which brought new and increased fame to its
author, appeared in 1808. Two years afterwards he published
The Lady of the Lake, which is perhaps the best-known of his
poems at the present day. From that time to 1815 Scott was
engaged in the composition of his remaining poems, The Vision
of Don Roderick, Rokeby, The Bridal of Triermain, and The
Lord of the Isles. Of these, The Vision met with comparatively
small success, Rokeby evoked only a moderate amount of en-
thusiasm, and The Lord of the Isles fell rather flat. But the
reputation he had gained by means of his three great poems
was so great that the inferiority was only looked upon as ' in
the comparative mood.'

In a history of poetry it would be out of place to do more

34

530 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

than refer in passing to the fact that Scott owes the greatness
of his fame even more to his Waverley Novels than to his poems.
It was mainly on account of these masterpieces that he was
created a Baronet by George IV. in 1820. For some years
after this honour was conferred on him his life was in all respects
an enviable one. But in 1826 there came a sad reverse in his
fortunes. The firm of Ballantyne and Co., printers, in which
he had for many years been a secret partner, became insolvent,
and the proportion of liability which lay upon the shoulders of
Scott amounted to £130,000. The burden of this enormous
debt cast a;gloom over the closing years of the poet's life.
Friends were not lacking in this hour of misfortune, and offers
were made to him which had as their object the lightening of
so serious a blow, but all such proffered aid was firmly and
respectfully declined. Sir 'Walter preferred to set himself
assiduously to work in the hope of in some measure reducing
the deficit by means of his own literary exertions. This object
he only partly accomplished. At his death, which took place
on his return from a journey to Italy and the Mediterranean,
which had been undertaken for the benefit of his health, the
debt still amounted to £54,000. It was only by the sale of his
copyrights that the whole was finally paid in 1847.

It was on the 2ist of September, 1832, that Sir Walter Scott
breathed his last. ' It was a beautiful day, so warm that every
window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound
most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over
its pebbles, was distinctly audible as his loved ones knelt around
the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.' His
remains lie buried in the family grave, which is situated among
the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, where in life the poet had loved
to linger and to dream.

Scott's life at Ashestiel may serve, says Dr. Collier, as a
specimen of his routine to the last, when he was in the country.
' Rising at five, he lit "his own fire (if it was cold weather),
dressed with care, and went out to see his favourite horse.
At six he was seated at his desk in his shooting-jacket or other
out-of-doors garb, with a dog or two couched at his feet. There
he wrote till breakfast-time, at nine or ten ; and by that time
he had, in his own words, " broken the neck of the day's work."
A couple of hours after breakfast were also given to the pen,

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 531

and at twelve he was " his own man " — free for the day. By
one he was on horseback, with his greyhounds led by his side,
ready for some hours' coursing ; or he was gliding in a boat
over some deep pool on the Tweed, salmon-spear in hand,
watching in the sunlight for a silver-scaled twenty-pounder.
Such sports, varied with breezy rides by green glen and purple
moorland, closed the day, whose early, hours had been given to
the Battle of Flodden or the romantic wanderings of Fitz-James.'
Professor Craik is the author of a passage which throws a
clear and valuable light on the colouring of Scott's earlier in-
spirations. He says : ' Walter Scott was never accounted one
of the Lake Poets ; yet he, as well as Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge, was early a drinker at the fountain of German poetry ;
his commencing publication was a translation of Burger's
Lenore (1796), and the spirit and manner of his original com-
positions were, from the first, evidently and powerfully influ-
enced by what had thus awakened his poetical faculty. His
robust and manly character of mind, however, and his strong
nationalism, with the innate disposition of his imagination to
live in the past rather than in the future, saved him from being
seduced into either the puerilities or the extravagances to which
other imitators of the German writers among us were thought
to have, more or less, given way ; and having soon found in
the popular ballad-poetry of his own country all the qualities
which had most attracted him in his foreign favourites, with
others which had an equal or still greater charm for his heart
and fancy, he henceforth gave himself up almost exclusively to
the more congenial inspiration of that native minstrelsy. His
poems are all lays and romances of chivalry, but infinitely finer
than any that had ever before, been written. With all their
irregularity and carelessness (qualities that in some sort are
characteristic of and essential to this kind of poetry), that
element of life in all writing, which comes of the excited feeling
and earnest belief of the writer, is never wanting ; this anima-
tion, fervour, enthusiasm — call it by what name we will-
exists in greater strength in no poetry than in that of Scott,
redeeming a thousand defects, and triumphing over all the
reclamations of criticism. It was this, no doubt, more than
anything else, which at once took the public admiration by
storm.'

34—2

532 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL'

DESCRIPTION OF MELROSE ABBEY

David I. (often called St. David), King of Scotland, founded and
endowed the Monastery of Melrose. Sir W. Scott's note is : David I.
of Scotland purchased the reputation of sanctity by founding and liberally
endowing not only the monastery of Melrose, but those of Kelso, Jedburgh,
and many others, which led to the well-known observation of his successor
that he was a sore saint for the crown.

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight ;

For the gay beams of lightsome day

Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white ;

When the cold light's uncertain shower

Streams on the ruin'd central tower ;

When buttress and buttress, alternately,

Seem framed of ebon and ivory ;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,

Then go — but go alone the while —

Then view St. David's ruin'd pile ;

And, home returning, soothly swear,

Was never scene so sad and fair ! . . .

The moon on the east oriel shone,
Through slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliaged tracery combined ;
Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand
'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand,

In many a freakish knot, had twined ;
Then framed a spell, when the work was done,
And changed the willow-wreaths to stone.

The silver light, so pale and faint,

Shewed many a prophet and many a saint,

Whose image on the glass was dyed :
Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Triumphant Michael brandished,

And trampled the Apostate's pride.
The moonbeam kiss'd the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.

LOVE OF COUNTRY

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead.
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land !
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd

From wandering on a foreign strand !
If such there breathe, go, mark him well
For him no minstrel raptures swell ;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim ;

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 533

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

O Caledonia ! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child !
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires ! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band
That knits me to thy rugged strand !
Still as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me, of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left ;
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.
By Yarrow's streams still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way ;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my withered cheek ;
Still lay my head by Teviot stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The bard may draw his parting groan.

FROM <M ARM I ON'
NORHAM CASTLE AT SUNSET

Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,

And Cheviot's mountains lone :
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,

In yellow lustre shone.
The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,

Seem'd forms of giant height :
Their armour, as it caught the rays,
Flash d back again the western blaze,

In lines of dazzling light.

St. George's banner, broad and gay,
Now faded , as the fading ray

Less bright, and less, was flung ;
The evening gale had scarce the power
To wave it on the Donjon Tower,

So heavily it hung.
The scouts had parted on their search,

The Castle gates were barr'd ;
Above the gloomy portal arch,
Timing his footsteps to a march,

The Warder kept his guard,
Low humming, as he paced along
Some ancient^Border gathering-song.

534 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

FROM 'IV AN HOE'
HYMN OF THE HEBREW MAID

When Israel, of the Lord beloved,

Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,

An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands

The cloudy pillar glided slow ;
By night, Arabia's crimson'd sands

Return'd the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise,

And trump and timbrel answer'd keen ;
And Zion's daughters poured their lays,

With priest's and warrior's voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,

Forsaken Israel wanders lone ;
Our fathers would not know Thy ways,

And Thou hast left them to their own.

But, present still, though now unseen !

When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen

To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah's path

In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be Thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,

A burning and a shining light !

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,

The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn ;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But Thou hast said, ' The blood of goat,

The flesh of rams, I will not prize ;
A contrite heart, a humble thought,

Are Mine accepted sacrifice.'

THOMAS CAMPBELL

1777-1844

' No poetry of this time/ says Dr. Craik, ' is probably so deeply
and universally written upon the popular heart and memory as
Campbell's greater lyrics.'

Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow on the 27th of July, 1777.
He came of an old Highland family, the Campbells of Kirnan,
in Argyllshire, who traced their descent from the first Norman
lord of Lochawe. Their property had passed from the family,
and the father of the poet carried on business in Glasgow as a

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 535

merchant, but was not very prosperous, his latter days being
spent in retirement, which was partly saved from absolute
penury by a pension from a provident society.

Thomas received a good education, and entered the University
of Glasgow, where he distinguished himself chiefly by his transla-
tion from the Greek. He won a prize for an English poem on
The Origin of Evil, modelled on the style of Pope. Other poems,
written before he was seventeen years of age, evinced his pre-
cocious talent in the art of versifying. So marked was his gift
for the translation of Greek authors that Professor Young
pronounced his rendering of part of the Clouds of Aristophanes
as the best exercise of the kind ever submitted by any student
of the University. When he was only twenty-one he created
quite a sensation in the literary world by the publication of
The Pleasures of Hope (1799), which ran through seven editions
in three years. The copyright of the poem was sold for /6o,
but for some years the publishers gave Campbell £50 on every
new edition of two thousand copies, and allowed him, in 1803,
to publish a quarto subscription copy, by means of which he
made £1,000. After the publication of the first edition 154 lines
were added to the poem, which was greatly admired and justly
praised for its high tone and exquisite finish.

Campbell was at first intended for the ministry, but he aban-
doned that idea, and spent a short while in Edinburgh with an
idea of studying law. But he eventually decided to devote all
his energies to the pursuit of literature.

Soon after the publication of The Pleasures of Hope the poet
went to the Continent. His departure took place on the ist of
June, 1800. After landing at Hamburg he went to Ratisbon, where
he witnessed the decisive battle which gave that place to the
French. ' The poet stood with the monks of the Scottish college of
St. James, on the ramparts near the monastery, while a charge of
Klenau's cavalry was made upon the French. He saw no other
scenes of actual warfare, but made various excursions into the
interior, and was well received by General Moreau and the other
French officers. It has been generally supposed that Campbell
was present at the Battle of Hohenlinden, but it was not fought
until some weeks after he had left Bavaria.' Whether present
at the time or no, he has certainly commemorated this battle in
one of the noblest poems of its kind in the language.

536 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Campbell was for some time a tutor in the family of Mr.
Downie, of Appin, in the Highlands, having previously held a
similar position in the Island of Mull. He married his cousin,
Matilda Sinclair, and settled down near London. Though happy
in this union, a gloom was cast over the lives of both by the
death of one son and the insanity of another. He was con-
stantly worried, moreover, by somewhat straitened circum-
stances, occasioned chiefly by his generosity to his mother and
?isters. His health also caused him much anxiety, but he was
obliged to labour without intermission in order to support his
family. Before and after the death of his wife, which occurred
in 1828, he was a frequent visitor to the Continent, and in 1834
he went as far as Algiers. He was three times elected Lord
Rector of Glasgow University. During his later years he received
a pension from the Government, and lived chiefly in London,
but he retired eventually to Boulogne, where he died in 1844.
His remains were brought to England and buried in Westminster
Abbey. It is recorded that at his funeral a portion of earth
from the grave of Kosciusko at Cracow was thrown into his
grave by a member of the Polish Association as a memento of
his devotion to the cause of Poland.

During his residence on the Danube and the Elbe Campbell
wrote some of his beautiful minor poems, which were published
in the Morning Chronicle. Amongst these was the Exile of Erin-.
In 1802 appeared Lochiel's Warning and The Battle of Hohenlinden.
In 1809 he published Gertrude of Wyoming, which ranks next to
the Pleasures of Hope in importance amongst his works. It is
a touching tale of an Indian invasion of that Pennsylvanian
village during the American War of Independence. Hazlitt
refers to it as a ' historical paraphrase of Mr. Wordsworth's
Ruth.' A Swiss tale, entitled Theodric, is almost universally
adjudged to be ' the purest in literature ' of his poems. Other
poetical works of his are The Pilgrim of Glencoe, which is not equal
in merit to his other works, The Battle of the Baltic, Ye Mariners
of England, and O'Connor's Child.

Campbell has proved himself a valuable and reliable critic in
his celebrated work Specimens of the British Poets.

In genius and taste Campbell has been frequently compared
to Gray, whom he certainly resembles in many details. The
s?.me delicacy and purity of sentiment, picturesqueriess, and

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 537

elevation of imagery are observable in the writings of both.
One of Campbell's many biographers says of him : ' His scholar-
ship was extensive ; he was prouder of his Greek than he was
of his poetry. His industry was great, though fortune often
compelled its expenditure on objects beneath his genius. No
man was more earnest in his sympathy with all that was generous
and noble, nor more truly fulfilled the practical duties of family
affection. His failings every good heart will forget in the splen-
dour of his genius and the amiableness of his personal character.'

LOCHIEL'S WARNING
WIZARD — LOCHIEL

Lochiel, Lochiel ! beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array !
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight :
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown ;
Woe, woe, to the riders that trample them down !
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain
But hark ! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far ?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin ! whose bride shall await,
Like a Jove-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning : no rider is there ;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin ! l to death and captivity led !
O weep ! but thy tears cannot number the dead :
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden ! that reeks with the blood of the brave.

Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer
Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight,
This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

Ha ! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn ?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn !.
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,
From his home, in the dark rolling clouds of the north ?
Lo ! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad ;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high !
Ah ! home let him speed, — for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit ? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast ?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.

1 The Gaelic appellation of Scotland — more particularly the Highlands.

538 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Oh, crested Lochiel ! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn ;
Return to thy dwelling ! all lonely return !
For blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

False Wizard, avaunt ! I have marshalled my clan,
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one !
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock !
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock !
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws ;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanronald the dauntless and Moray the proud,
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array —

Lochiel, Lochiel ! beware of the day ;

For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,

But man cannot cover what God would reveal ;

'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,

And coming events cast their shadows before.

I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring

With the blood-hounds that bark for thy fugitive king.1

Lo ! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,

Behold, where he flies on his desolate path !

Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight :

Rise ! rise ! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight !

'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors ;

Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.

But where is the iron-bound prisoner ? Where ?

For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.

Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn,

Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn ?

Ah no ! for a darker departure is near ;

The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier ;

His death-bell is tolling : oh ! mercy, dispel

Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell !

Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,

And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims !

Accursed be the faggots that blaze at his feet.

Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat,

With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale

Down, soothless insulter ! I trust not the tale :

For never shall Albin a destiny meet,

So black with dishonour, so foul with retreat.

Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,

Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,

1 Prince Charles Edward Stuart, whom the Highlanders of that day
regarded as their rightful king.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 539

Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,

While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,

Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,

With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe !

And leaving in battle no blot on his name,

Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.

THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC

The naval battle commemorated in this lyric was fought during the
great struggle which England was waging against Napoleon at the begin-
ning of this century. Copenhagen was invested by the British fleet under
Admiral Gambier, and the army under Lord Cathcart, on the 1 6th of August,
1807. Firing began on the 2nd of September. On the 5th of September
the Danes capitulated; and their fleet, consisting of 18 ships of the line,
15 frigates, 6 brigs, and 25 gunboats, fell into the hands of the English.
Nelson was the hero of the naval fight, although not at that time in the
chief command

Of Nelson and the North,

Sing the glorious day's renown,

When to battle fierce came forth

All the might of Denmark's crown,

And her arms along the deep proudly shone ;

By each gun the lighted brand,

In a bold determined hand,

And the Prince of all the land

Led them on.

ii

Like leviathans afloat,

Lay their bulwarks on the brine ;

While the sign of battle flew

On the lofty British line :

It was ten of April morn by the chime ;

As they drifted on their path,

There was silence deep as death ;

And the boldest held his breath

For a time.

in

But the might of England flushed

To anticipate the scene ;

And her van the fleeter rushed

O'er the deadly space between.

' Hearts of oak !' our captain cried ; when each gun

From its adamantine lips

Spread a death-shade round the ships,

Like the hurricane eclipse

Of the sun.

IV

Again ! again ! again !

And the havoc did not slack,

Till a feeble cheer the Dane

To our cheering sent us back ; —

Their shots along the deep slowly boom : —

Then ceased — and all is wail,

As they strike the shattered sail ;

Or, in conflagration pale,

Light the gloom.

540 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Out spoke the victor then,

As he hailed them o'er the wave :

' Ye are brothers ! ye are men !

And we conquer but to save : —

So peace instead of death let us bring ;

But yield, proud foe, thy fleet,

With the crews, at England's feet,

And make submission meet

To our King.'

VI

Then Denmark blessed our chief,

That he gave her wounds repose ;

And the sounds of joy and grief

From her people wildly rose,

As death withdrew his shades from the day.

While the sun looked smiling bright

O'er a wide and woeful sight,

Where the fires of funeral light

Died away.

Now joy, Old England, raise !
For the tidings of thy might,
By the festal cities' blaze,
While the wine-cup shines in light ;
And yet amidst that joy and uproar,
Let us think of them that sleep,
Full many a fathom deep,
By thy wild and stormy steep,
Elsinore !

Brave hearts ! to Britain's pride

Once so faithful and so true,

On the deck of fame that died ; —

With the gallant good Riou :'

Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave

While the billow mournful rolls,

And the mermaid's song condoles,

Singing glory to the souls

Of the brave !

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM

Our bugles sang truce — for the night-cloud had lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky ;

And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain ;

At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

1 Captain Riou, justly entitled the gallant and the good by Lord Nelson
when he wrote home his dispatches.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 541

Methought from the battlefield's dreadful array,

Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track :
'Twas Autumn — and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I new to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young,

I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore,
From my home and my weeping friends never to part ;

My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.

Stay, stay with us — rest, thou art weary and worn ;

And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay ; —
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,

And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

EXILE OF ERIN1

There is a curious story about this poem. Its publication is stated to
have given great offence in exalted quarters. Hence, when Campbell
returned from the Continent he was arrested as a French spy. The magis-
trate who conducted the examination searched the poet's papers, and
discovered the MS. of ' Ye Mariners of England '! One poem atoned
for the offence caused by the other, and Campbell was at once liberated.

There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill :

For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,

For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,

Where once in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of ' Erin go bragh !'-

' Sad is my fate !' said the heart-broken stranger ;

' The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,

A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again, in the green sunny bowers,
Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers, (

And strike to the numbers of " Erin go bragh !"

' Erin, my country ! though sad and forsaken,

In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore ;
But, alas ! in a far foreign land I awaken,

And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more !
Oh, cruel fate ! wilt thou never replace me
In a mansion of peace — where no perils can chase me ?
Never again shall my brothers embrace me ?

They died to defend me, or live to deplore !

1 Anthony McCann, exiled for being implicated in the Irish Rebellion
of 1798. Campbell met him at Hamburg.
a Ireland for ever.

542 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

' Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild-wood ?

Sisters and sire ! did ye weep for its fall ?
Where is the mother that looked on my childhood ?

And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all ?
Oh ! my sad heart ! long abandoned by pleasure,
Why did it dote on a fast-fading treasure ?
Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,

But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

' Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw :

Erin ! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing !
Land of my forefathers ! " Erin go bragh !"

Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,

Green be thy fields — sweetest isle of the ocean !

And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion,
" Erin mavournin l — Erin go bragh !" '

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND
A NAVAL ODE

Ye Mariners of England !

That guard our native seas ;

Whose flag has braved a thousand years,

The battle and the breeze !

Your glorious standard launch again

To meet another foe !

And sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow ;

While the battle rages loud and long

And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirits of your fathers

Shall start from every wave ! —

For the deck it was their field of fame.

And Ocean was their grave :

Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,

Your manly hearts shall glow,

As ye sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow ;

While the battle rages loud and long,

And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwark,

No towers along the steep ;

Her march is o'er the mountain-waves,

Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak,

She quells the floods below, —

As they roar on the shore,

When the stormy winds do blow ;

When the battle rages loud and long,

And the stormy winds do blow.

1 Ireland, my darling.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 543

IV

The meteor flag of England

Shall yet terrific burn ;

Till danger's troubled night depart.

And the star -of peace return.

Then, then, ye ocean- warriors !

Our song and feast shall flow

To the fame of your name,

When the storm has ceased to blow ;

When the fiery fight is heard no more,

And the storm has ceased to blow.

JOHN WILSON

1785-1854

JOHN WILSON was the son of a wealthy Scottish merchant, and
was born at Paisley on the i8th of May, 1785. He has been
classed by some critics as ' amongst the Lake School of poets,
but free from their defects.' His claim to this classification lies
mainly in the fact that, after graduating at Oxford (where he
had won the Newdigate prize for the best English poem of fifty
lines), he went to reside in the Lake District, on the banks of
Windermere. It is well known that he was attracted thither
by the love that he had for Wordsworth, Southey, and Cole-
ridge.

His chief poems are The Isle of Palms (1812) and The City after
the Plague (1816). He also wrote a beautiful description of
Highland scenery, entitled Unimore, in Blaokwood's Magazine.
His smaller poems are sonnets and occasional pieces. His
writings are characterized by great beauty of description, ex-
quisite tenderness of sentiment, and a fine melody and richness
of expression.

In 1851 Professor Wilson was granted a pension of £300 per
annum, and for many years he occupied with great distinction
the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.

Though his first laurels were won by his poetry, yet it was as a
writer of prose that he excelled most of his contemporaries. A
writer in the Quarterly Review says : ' His poetry can never, in
our opinion, take a foremost place amongst the English classics.
His prose tales, Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, etc., had

544 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

their day. . . . But far above all his contemporaries, and,
indeed, above all writers of the same class in any age, he soars as a
rhapsodist. As Christopher North, by the loch, or on the moors,
or at Ambrose's, he is the most gifted and extraordinary being
that ever wielded pen. We can compare him, when such fits
are on, to nothing more aptly than to a huge Newfoundland dog,
the most perfect of its kind ; or, better still, to the " Beautiful
Leopard from the valley of the Palm-trees," which, in sheer
wantonness and without any settled purpose, throws itself into
a thousand attitudes, always astonishing and often singularly
graceful.'

FROM LINES TO A SLEEPING CHILD

Art thou a thing of mortal birth
Whose happy home is on our earth ?
Does human blood with life imbue
Those wandering veins of heavenly blue
That stray along thy forehead fair
Lost 'mid a gleam of golden hair ?
Oh, can that light and airy breath
Steal from a being doomed to death ?
Those features to the grave be sent
In sleep thus mutely eloquent ?
Or art thou, what thy form would seem,
The phantom of a blessed dream ?

THE EVENING CLOUD

A cloud lay cradled near the setting sun,
A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow :
Long had I watched the glory moving on
O'er the still radiance of the lake below.
Tranquil its spirit seem'd, and floated slow !
Even in its very motion there was rest? :
While every breath of eve that chanced to blow
Wafted the* traveller to the beauteous West.
Emblem, methought, of the departed soul !
To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given ;
And by the breath of mercy made to roll
Right onwards to the golden gate of Heaven,
Where, to the eye of faith, it peaceful lies,
And tells to man his glorious destinies.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 545

IRISH POETS

THOMAS MOORE
1779-1852

THOMAS MOORE was born in Dublin in the year 1779. He was
the son of ' poor but respectable parents.' A Roman Catholic,
he was one of the first of that creed to take advantage of the
Act which opened the doors of the University of Dublin to
students who were not members of the Established Church.
He took his degree of B.A. in 1798, and in the following year he
went to London and took chambers in the Temple in order to
qualify himself for the legal profession. Mr. Shaw, who devotes
more space to this Irish poet than most English writers on the
history of literature in these islands, tells us that ' he had qualities
to make him the darling of gay society, a great talent for con-
versation, an agreeable voice, with musical skill enough to give
enchanting effect to his tender or passionate or patriotic songs.
But his dignity of character perhaps suffered from his weakness
for the frivolous triumphs of fashionable circles.' During his
years of study at Trinity College, Dublin, he had made the
acquaintance of Robert Emmet, whose strongly-marked char-
acter and political influence imbued the poet with revolutionary
sympathies.

In 1803 Moore obtained an appointment in the Bermudas,
but he was only absent from his home in England for the short
space of fourteen months. He made a tour in America before
he returned, and during that time wrote some of his most ex-
quisite poems. On leaving the beautiful Western islands, he
appointed a deputy to perform the duties of his office until he
should return and resume them himself, but in the year 1819,
when Moore was residing at Sloperton Cottage, in Wiltshire, he
heard that his deputy had embezzled a large sum of money.,
and had absconded. This circumstance, it appears, rendered
Moore himself liable to arrest. He therefore quitted England,
and made up his mind to pay off the debt by means of
what money he could earn by literary labours. This he was
able to do only in part, but the Government were lenient, and

35

546 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

condoned the offence after a small proportion had been refunded.
During his absence from England, which lasted from 1819 to
1822, a period of three years, he spent most of his time in Paris.

' The frightful explosion,' as Moore calls it, ' of 1798 changed
his views on the subject of open rebellion, but he remained an
ardent opponent of religious and political ascendency.'

Moore is chiefly known to the world as the tuneful and patriotic
author of Irish Melodies, a collection of about 125 songs, which
were set to music by Sir John Stevenson, an eminent Irish com-
poser. The songs, ' as regards popularity, occupied/ and we
would add, occupy, ' a somewhat similar position in England
and Ireland to that of Beranger in France.' They appeared
in print periodically from 1807 to 1834. No lyrical poetry has
ever surpassed these gems of song for beauty and sweetness.
Indeed, to attempt to compare them with the works of any
other writer of songs would be to strain after comparison where
no similarity exists. The Melodies of Moore stand alone in
their glory of cadence, fluency, and rhythm. In their loveli-
ness the soul of the poet himself seems to be revealed, a soul
full of love, patriotism, and truth. There is in them a delightful
blending of the pathetic and the gay, the convivial and the
serious, and the borderland of refinement is never for a moment
overstepped in one. of them.

In his ' Letter to the Marchioness Dowager of Donegal,' pre-
fixed to the third number, the poet gives us a Prefatory Letter
on Music which gives the student an insight into the spirit and
purpose which inspired him as he wrote these lyrics. In the
course of this letter the writer says :

' It has often been remarked, and oftener felt, that our music
is the truest of all comments upon our history. The tone of
defiance, succeeded by the languor of despondency — a burst of
turbulence dying away into softness — the sorrows of one moment
lost in the levity of the next — and all that romantic mixture of
mirth and sadness which is naturally produced by the efforts of
a lively temperament to shake off, or forget, the wrongs which
lie upon it. Such are the features of our history and character,
which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in our music ;
and there are even many airs which it is difficult to listen to
without recalling some period or event to which their expression
seems peculiarly applicable. Sometimes, for instance, when the

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 547

strain is open and spirited, yet shaded here and there by a mourn-
ful recollection, we can fancy that we behold the brave allies of
Montrose1 marching to the aid of the royal cause, notwithstand
ing all the perfidy of Charles and his ministers, and remembering
just enough of past sufferings to enhance the generosity of their
present sacrifice. The plaintive melodies of Carolan take us
back to the times in which he lived, when our poor countrymen
were driven to worship their God in caves, or to quit for ever
the land of their birth, — like the bird that abandons the nest
which human touch 'has violated. In many of these mournful
songs we seem to hear the last farewell of the exile, mingling
regret for the ties he leaves at home with sanguine expectations
of the honours that await him abroad — such honours as were
won on the field of Fontenoy, where the valour of Irish Catholics
turned the fortune of the day, and extorted from George II.
that memorable exclamation : " Cursed be the laws which
deprive me of such subjects !"

' Though much has been said of the antiquity of our music,
it is certain that our finest and most popular airs are modern ;
and perhaps we may look no further than the last disgraceful
century for the origin of most of those wild and melancholy
strains which were at once the offspring and solace of grief, and
which were applied to the mind, as music was formerly to the
body, " decantare loca dolentia."

' In addition, indeed, to the power which music must always
have possessed over the minds of a people so ardent and sus-
ceptible, the stimulus of persecution was not wanting to quicken
our taste into enthusiasm ; the charms of song were ennobled
with the glories of martyrdom, and the acts against minstrels
in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth were as successful,
I doubt not, in making my countrymen musicians as the penal
laws have been in keeping them Catholics.

' With respect to the verses which I have written for these
melodies, as they are intended rather to be sung than read, I
can answer for their sound with somewhat more confidence than
their sense ; yet it would be affectation to deny that I have

1 There are some gratifying accounts of the gallantry of these Irish
auxiliaries in The Complete History of the Wars in Scotland under Montrose
(1660). Clarendon owns that the Marquis of Montrose was indebted
for much of his miraculous success to this small band of Irish heroes
under Macdonnell.

35—2

548 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

given much attention to the task, and that it is not through
want of zeal or industry if I unfortunately disgrace the sweet
airs of my country by poetry altogether unworthy of their
taste, their energy, and their tenderness.'

Apart from the Melodies, which will ever retain the first place
in popular favour, Moore's greatest work is Lalla Rookh. The
plan of it is, according to the best critics, original and happy.
A love-tale sets forth a description of the journey of a lovely
Eastern Princess from Delhi to Bucharia, to meet her lover,
who is King of the latter country. The chamberlain of the
Princess, Fahladeen, supplies most of the comic element, and
by his drolleries considerably lightens the description of the
journey, which is otherwise relieved by the poet with the aid
of a constant stream of Oriental lore and ornate details of
scenery, costumes, and ceremonial. To amuse the Princess, a
young poet or minstrel of Bucharia, named Feramorz, is made
to sing to the accompaniment of his guitar four romantic tales
in verse. As is most natural under all the circumstances, the
young lady falls in love with the fascinating musician. She
grows sadder and sadder at the thought of her hopeless attach-
ment, and arrives at the home of her affianced husband a victim
of increasing melancholy. But her kingly lover proves to be
none other than the bard she has learned to love, and the maiden
is glad in the prospect which she had feared. The four poems-
in Lalla Rookh are entitled respectively The Veiled Prophet, The
Fire-W 'or 'shippers, Paradise and the Peri, and The Light of the
Harem. Of these, Mr. Shaw's analysis is as follows :

' The longest and most ambitious is the first, which is written
in the heroic couplet, while the others are composed in those
irregular animated octosyllabics which Walter Scott and Byron
brought into fashion. The Veiled Prophet is a story of love,
fanaticism, and vengeance, founded on the career of an impostor
who made his appearance in Khorassan, and after leading astray
numberless dupes by a pretended miraculous mission to over-
throw Mohammedanism, was at last defeated. He is, in short, a
kind of Mussulman Antichrist. The betrayal of the heroine by
his diabolical acts, and the voluptuous temptations by which
he induces a young Circassian chieftain to join his standard,
the recognition of the lovers, and the tragical death of the
deceiver and his victims form the plot. Its defects are chiefly

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 549

a uniform tone of agonized and intense feeling which becomes
monotonous and strained, and the want of reality in the char-
acters, the demoniac wickedness of Mokanna being contrasted
with the superhuman exaltation of love and sorrow in the
lovers. Nor did Moore possess full mastery over the grave and
masculine heroic versification ; and, therefore, despite the rich-
ness of the imagery and descriptions, the poet's genius is more
favourably exhibited in the beautiful songs and lyrics which
are interspersed, as in the scene where Azim is introduced to
a foretaste of the' joys of Paradise. This portion of the poem
is borrowed from the half-fabulous accounts of the initiation
of the celebrated sect of the Assassins.

' The Fire-Worshippers, also a love-story, is bound up with
the cruel persecutions of the Turks of the Guebres ; but under
the guise of tyrannical orthodoxy opposed to patriotic defenders
of their country and their faith, Moore undoubtedly intended
to typify the resistance of the Irish (Roman) Catholics to their
English and Protestant oppressors. The love-adventures of
Hafed, the Guebre chief, and Fatima. the daughter of the
Mussulman tyrant, are not very original ; but some of the
descriptions are animated and striking, in spite of a rather
overstrained and too emphatic tone.

' Paradise and the Peri is a very graceful apologue, and the
scenes in which the exiled fairy seeks the gift which is to secure
her readmission to Heaven are picturesque. She successively
offers as her passport the last drop of blood shed by a patriot,
the dying sigh of a self-devoted lover, but these are pronounced
insufficient ; at last she presents the tear of a repentant sinner,
which is received. Fanciful and tender to the highest degree,
the whole story has a compactness and completeness which
render it very charming.

' The Light of the Harem is a little love-episode between " the
magnificent son of Akbar" and his beautiful favourite — Nour-
mahal. A coldness between the lovers is terminated by a
mysterious and lovely enchantress, who evokes the Spirit of
Music to furnish Nourmahal with a magic wreath of flowers.
This gives to the voice of its wearer such a superhuman power
that when she presents herself disguised, to sing before her
imperial lover at the Feast of Roses, all his former passion
revives. The description of the flower-sorceress Namouna, the

550 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

invocation, and above all the exquisitely varied and highly-
finished songs, afford striking examples of the graceful and
musical, if somewhat fantastic and artificial, genius of Moore.'

The Loves of the Angels is by no means equal to the other
poems of this illustrious writer in conception or workmanship.
Besides these, he published Odes on Cash, Corn, and Catholics,
Fables for the Holy Alliance, and a number of prose works, the
chief of which is his Life of Lord Byron.

Of Moore's minor poems, written in his lighter and more
playful mood, and consisting mainly of lampoons directed
against the Tory party, Mr. Spalding speaks in the following
eulogistic terms : ' Probably he is nowhere so successful as in
his satirical effusions of Comic Rhyme ; for in these his fanciful
ideas are prompted by a wit so sharp, and expressed with a
pointedness and neatness so very unusual, that it is a pity these
pieces should be condemned to speedy forgetful ness, as they
must be, by the temporary interest of their topics.' But, if
we may be pardoned for venturing to criticise the critic himself,
we would venture to say that this expression of opinion, com-
plimentary to a portion of the poet's work and genius, is entirely
inadequate to the greatness of the subject. ' There are spots
upon the sun itself,' and there are flaws in the workmanship of
all who are endowed with human genius, but the name of Moore
will ever be identified with all that is best and sweetest in the
realm of poesy, and will always stand pre-eminent in the annals
of the sons of song.

ECHO

How sweet the answer Echo makes
To Music at night,

When, rous'd by lute or horn, she wakes,
And far away o'er lawns and lakes
Goes answering light !

Yet Love hath echoes truer far,

And far more sweet,

Than e'er, beneath the moonlight's star,

Of horn or lute or soft guitar

The songs repeat.

'Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,
And only then, —

The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear,
Is by that one, that only dear
Breath'd back again !

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 551

PRO PATRIA MORI

When he who adores thee has left but the name

Of his fault and his sorrows behind,
Oh, say, wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame

Of a life that for thee was resign'd ?
Yes, weep ! and however my foes may condemn.

Thy tears shall efface their decree ;
For Heaven can witness, though guilty to them,

I have been but too faithful to thee !

With thee were the dreams of my earliest love ;

Every thought of my reason was thine ;
In my last humble prayer to the Spirit above,

Thy name shall be mingled with mine !
Oh, blest are the lovers and friends who shall live

The days of thy glory to see ;
But the next dearest blessing that Heaven can give

Is the pride of thus dying for thee !

BEAUTY

Oh, what a pure and sacred thing

Is Beauty, curtained from the sight
Of the gross world, illumining

One only mansion with her light !
Unseen by man's disturbing eye —

The flower that blooms beneath the sea,
Too deep for sunbeams, doth not lie

Hid in more chaste obscurity. . . .
A soul, too, more than half divine,

Where, through some shades of eaithly feeling,
Religion's softened glories shine,

Like light through summer foliage stealing,
Shedding a glow of such mild hue,
So warm, and yet so shadowy too,
As makes the very darkness there
More beautiful than light elsewhere.

TO LORD VISCOUNT STRANGFORD

ABOARD THE ' PHAETON ' FRIGATE, OFF THE AZORES, BY MOONLIGHT

Sweet Moon ! if, like Crotona's sage,1

By any spell my hand could dare
To make thy disk its ample page,

And write my thoughts, my wishes there !
How many a friend, whose careless eye
Now wanders o'er that starry sky,
Should smile, upon thy orb to meet
The recollection kind and sweet,
The reveries of fond regret,
The promise, never to forget,
And all my heart and soul would send
To many a dear-loved, distant friend.

1 Pythagoras, who was supposed to have a power of writing upon the
moon by means of a magic mirror.

552 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

How little, when we parted last

I thought those plea.sant times were past,

For ever past, when brilliant joy

Was all my vacant heart's employ :

When, fresh from mirth to mirth again,

We thought the rapid hours too few ;
Our only use for knowledge then

To gather bliss from all we knew.
Delicious days of whim and soul !

When, mingling lore and laugh together,
We lean'd the book on Pleasure's bowl,

And turn'd the leaf with Folly's feather.
Little I thought that all were fled,
That, ere that summer's bloom was shed,
My eye should see the sail unfurl'd
That wafts me to the western world.

And yet, 'twas time ; — in youth's sweet days,

To cool that season's glowing rays,

The heart awhile, with wanton wing,

May dip and dive in Pleasure's spring ;

But, if it wait for winter's breeze,

The spring will chill, the heart will freeze.

And then, that Hope, that fairy Hope, —

Oh ! she awak'd such happy dreams,
And gave my soul such tempting scope

For all its dearest, fondest schemes,
That not Verona's child of song,

When flying from the Phrygian shore,
With lighter heart could bound along,

Or pant to be a wand'rer more !

Even now delusive hope will steal
Amid the dark regrets I feel,
Soothing, as yonder placid beam

Pursues the murmurers of the deep,
And lights them with consoling gleam,

And smiles them into tranquil sleep.
Oh ! such a blessed night as this,

I often think, if friends were near,
How we should feel, and gaze with bliss

Upon the moon-bright scenery here !
The sea is like a silvery lake,

And, o'er its calm the vessel glides
Gently, as if it fear'd to wake

The slumber of the silent tides.
The only envious cloud that lowers,

Hath hung its shade on Pico's height,
Where dimly, 'mid the dusk, he towers

And scowling at this heav'n of light,
Exults to see the infant storm
Cling darkly round his giant form !
*****
But hark ! — the boatswain's pipings tell
'Tis time to bid my dream farewell :
Eight bells — the middle watch is set ;
Good-night, my Strangford ! — ne'er forget
That, far beyond the western sea
Is one whose heart remembers thee.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 553

THE JOURNEY ONWARDS

As slow our ship her foamy track

Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still look'd back

To that dear Isle 'twas leaving.
So loth we part from all we love,

From all the links that bind us ;
So turn our hearts, as on we rove,

To thqse we've left behind us !

When, round the bowl, of vanish' d years

We talk with joyous seeming, —
With smiles that might as well be tears,

So faint, so sad their beaming ;
While mem'ry brings us back again

Each early' tie that twined us,
Oh, sweet's the cup that circles then

To those we've left behind us !

And when, in other climes, we meet

Some isle or vale enchanting.
Where all looks flow'ry, wild and sweet,

And nought but love is wanting ;
We think how great had been our bliss

If Heav'n had but assign'd us
To live and die in scenes like this,

With some we've left behind us !

As trav'llers oft look back at eve

When eastward darkly going,
To gaze upon that light they leave

Still faint behind them glowing, —
So, when the close of pleasure's day

To gloom hath near consign'd us,
We turn to catch one fading ray

'Of joy that's left behind us.

LINES ON THE DEATH OF SH— R— D— N
' Principibus placuisse viris !' — HORAT.

Yes, grief will have way — but the fast-falling tear
Shall be mingled with deep execrations on those

Who could bask in that Spirit's meridian career,
And yet leave it thus lonely and dark at its close : —

Whose vanity flew round him, only while fed
By the odour his fame in its summer-time gave ,

Whose vanity now, with quick scent for the dead,

Like the Ghole of the East, comes to feed at his grave.

Oh ! it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow
And spirits so mean in the great and high-born ;

To think what a long line of titles may follow
The relics of him who died — friendless and lorn !

554 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

How proud they can press to the fun'ral array

Of one whom they shunn'd in his sickness and sorrow !

How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,

Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow !

And thou, too, whose life, a sick epicure's dream,
Incoherent and gross, even grosser had pass d,

Were it not for that cordial and soul-giving beam

Which his friendship and wit o'er thy nothingness cast :

No, not for the wealth of the land that supplies thee
With millions to heap upon Foppery's shrine ; —

No, not for the riches of all who despise thee,
Though this would make Europe's whole opulence mine ; —

Would I suffer what — ev'n in the heart that thou hast —
All mean as it is — must have consciously burn'd.

When the pittance, which shame had wrung from thee at last,
And which found all his wants at an end, was return'd ! 1

' Was this, then, the fate ' — future ages will say,
When some names shall live but in history's curse ;

When Truth will be heard, and these lords of a day
Be forgotten as fools, or remembered as worse —

' Was this, then, the fate of that high-gifted man,
The pride of the palace, the bow'r, and the hall,

The orator — dramatist — minstrel, — who ran

Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all ; —

' Whose mind was an essence, compounded with art
From the finest and best of all other men's pow'rs —

Who ruled, like a wizard, the world of the heart,

And could call up its sunshine, or bring down its show'rs ; —

' Whose humour, as gay as the fire-fly's light,

Play'd round every subject, and shone as it play'd ; —

Whose wit, in the combat, as gentle as bright,
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade ; —

' Whose eloquence — bright'ning whatever it tried,
Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave —

Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide
As ever bore Freedom aloft on its wave !'

Yes — such was the man, and so wretched his fate ; —
And thus, sooner or later, shall all have to grieve,

Who waste their morn's dew in the beams of the Great,
And expect 'twill return to refresh them at eve !

In the woods of the North there are insects that prey
On the brain of the elk till his very last sigh ; 2

Oh, Genius ! thy patrons, more cruel than they,

First feed on thy brains, and then leave thee to die !

1 The sum was two hundred pounds — offered when Sh-r-d-n could no
longer take any sustenance, and declined for him by his friends.

2 Naturalists have observed that, upon dissecting an elk, there were
found in its head some large flies, with its brain almost eaten away by them.
— History of Poland.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 555

O THE SHAMROCK !

Through Erin's Isle,

To sport awhile,
As Love and Valour wander'd,

With Wit, the sprite,

Whose quiver bright
A thousand arrows squander'd ;

Where'er they pass,

A triple grass 1
Shoots up, with dew-drops streaming

As softly green

As emeralds seen
Through purest crystal gleaming.
O the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock !
Chosen leaf

Of Bard and Chief,
Old Erin's native Shamrock !

Says Valour, ' See,

They spring for me.
Those leafy gems of morning !'

Says Love, ' No, no,

For me they grow,.
My fragrant path adorning.'

But Wit perceives

The triple leaves,
And cries, ' Oh'! do not sever

A type that blends

Three godlike friends,

Love, Valour, Wit, for ever !'
O the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock !
Chosen leaf

Of Bard and Chief,
Old Erin's native Shamrock !

So firmly fond

May last the bond
They wove that morn together,

And ne'er may fall

One drop of gall
On Wit's celestial feather !

May Love, as twine

His flowers divine,
Of thorny falsehood weed 'em !

May Valour ne'er

His standard rear
Against the cause of Freedom !
O the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock !
Chosen leaf

Of Bard and Chief,
Old Erin's native Shamrock !

1 Saint Patrick is said to have made use of that species of trefoil to
which in Ireland we give the name of shamrock in explaining the doctrine
of the Trinity to the pagan Irish. Hope, among the ancients, was some-
times represented as a beautiful child, ' standing upon tip-toes, and a
trefoil, or three-coloured grass, in her hand.'

556 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

THE ORIGIN OF THE HARP

'Tis believ'd that this Harp, which I wake now for thee,
Was a Siren of old, who sung under the sea ;
And who often, at eve, through the bright waters rov'd,
To meet, on the green shore, a youth whom she lov'd.

But she lov'd him in vain, for he left her to weep,
And in tears, all the night, her gold tresses to steep ;
Till Heav'n look'd with pity on true love so warm,
And chang'd to this soft Harp the sea-maiden's form.

Still her bosom rose fair — still her cheeks smil'd the same —
While her sea-beauties gracefully form'd the light frame ;
And her hair, as, let loose, o'er her white arm it fell,
Was chang'd to bright chords, utt'ring melody's spell.

Hence it came, that this soft Harp so long hath been known

To mingle love's language with sorrow's sad tone ;

Till than didst divide them, and teach the fond lay

To speak love when I'm near thee, and grief when away !

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM

Oh ! the days are gone, when Beauty bright

My heart's chain wove ;
When my dream of life, from morn till night,

Was love, still love.

New hope may bloom,

And days may come
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there's nothing half so sweet in life

As love's young dream :
No, there's nothing half so sweet in life

As love's young dream.

Though the bard to purer fame may soar,

When wild youth's past ;
Though he win the wise, who frown'd before,
To smile at last ;
He'll never meet
A joy so sweet,
In all his'noon of fame,
As when first he sung to woman's ear

His soul-felt flame.

And, at every close, she blush'd to hear
The one lov'd name.

No, — that hallow'd form is ne'er forgot

Which first love trac'd ;
Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot
On memory's waste.
'Twas odour fled
As soon as shed ;
'Twas morning's winged dream ;
'Twas a light, that ne'er can shine again

On life's dull stream :

Oh ! 'twas light that ne'er can shine again
On life's dull stream.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 557

RICH AND RARE WERE THE GEMS SHE WORE1

Rich and rare were the gems she wore,
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore ;
But oh ! her beauty was far beyond
Her sparkling gems or snow-white wand.

' Lady, dost thou not fear to stray,

So lone and lovely, through this bleak way ?

Are Erin's sons so good or so cold,

As not to be tempted by woman or gold ?'

' Sir Knight ! I feel not the least alarm,

No son of Erin will offer me harm : —

For, though they love woman and golden store,

Sir Knight ! they love honour and virtue more.'

On she went, and her maiden smile
In safety lighted her round the Green Isle ;
And blest for ever is she who relied
Upon Erin's honour and Erin's pride.

DESMOND'S SONG3

By the Feal's wave benighted,

Not a star in the skies,
To thy door by Love lighted,

I first saw those eyes.
Some voice whisper'd o'er me,

As the threshold I crost,
There was ruin before me :

If I lov'd, I was lost.

Love came, and brought sorrow

Too soon in his train ;
Yet so sweet, that to-morrow

'Twere welcome again.
Though misery's full measure

'My portion should be,
I would drain it with pleasure,

If pour'd out by thee.

1 This ballad is founded upon the following anecdote : ' The people
were inspired with such a spirit of honour, virtue, and religion by the
great example of Brien, and by his excellent administration, that as a
proof of it we are informed that a young- lady of great beauty, adorned with
jewels and a costly dress, undertook a journey alone, from one end of the
kingdom to the other, with a wand only in her hand, at the top of which
was a ring of exceeding great value ; and such an impression had the laws
and government of this monarch made on the minds of all the people,
that no attempt was made upon her honour, nor was she robbed of her
clothes or jewels.' — WARNER'S History of Ireland, vol. i., bk. x.

2 Thomas, the heir of the Desmond family, had accidentally been so
engaged in the chase that he was benighted near Tralee, and obliged to
take shelter at the Abbey of Feal, in the house of one of his dependents,
called MacCormac. Catherine, a beautiful daughter of his host, instantly
inspired the Earl with a violent passion, which he could not subdue. He
married her, and by this inferior alliance alienated his followers, whose
brutal pride regarded this indulgence of his love as an unpardonable
degradation of his family. — Leland, vol. ii.

558 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

You who call it dishonour

To bow to this flame,
If you've eyes, look but on her,

And blush while you blame.
Hath the pearl less whiteness

Because of its birth ?
Hath the violet less brightness

For growing near earth ?

No — Man, for his glory,

To ancestry flies ;
While Woman's bright story

Is told in her eyes.
While the monarch but traces

Through mortals his line.
Beauty, born of the Graces,

Ranks next to Divine !

THEY KNOW NOT MY HEART

They know not my heart, who believe there can be
One stain of this earth in its feelings for thee ;
Who think, while I see thee in beauty's young hour,
As pure as the morning's first dew on the flow'r,
I could harm what I love — as the sun's wanton ray
But smiles on the dew-drop to waste it away !
No — beaming with light as those young features are,
There's a light round thy heart which is lovelier far :
It is not that cheek — 'tis the soul dawning clear
Through its innocent blush makes thy beauty so dear ;
As the sky we look up to, though glorious and fair,
Is look'd up to the more, because Heaven is there !

GO WHERE GLORY WAITS THEE

Go where glory waits thee,
But while fame elates thee,

Oh ! still remember me.
When the praise thou meetest
To thine ear is sweetest,

Oh ! then remember me.
Other arms may press thee,
Dearer friends caress thee,
All the joys that bless thee,

Sweeter far may be ;
But when friends are nearest,
And when joys are dearest,

Oh ! then remember me.

When at eve thou rovest
By the star thou lovest,

Oh ! then remember me.
Think, when home returning,
Bright we've seen it burning,

Oh ! thus remember me
Oft as summer closes,
W7hen thine eye reposes
On its ling'ring roses.

Once so lov'd by thee,
Think of her who wove them,
Her who made thee love them,

Oh ! then remember me.

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 559

When, around thee dying,
Autumn leaves are lying,

Oh ! then remember me.
And, at night, when gazing
On the gay hearth blazing,

Oh ! still remember me.
Then, should music, stealing
All the soul of feeling,
To thy heart appealing,

Draw one tear from thee ;
Then let memory bring thee
Strains I us'd to sing thee, —

Oh ! then remember me.

ARCHBISHOP TRENCH

1807-1886

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH was born in Dublin. His father,
Richard Trench, was a brother of the first Lord Ashtown, whose
ancestors settled in Ireland in 1631. His mother was a grand-
daughter of Richard Chenevix Trench, Bishop of Waterford,
whose grandfather took refuge in England after the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. Thus the family was, in part, of French
extraction.

The future Archbishop was born on the 5th of September, 1807.
He was educated at Twyford, near Winchester, and afterwards
at Harrow, where his poetical compositions drew attention to
him as a pupil of great promise. In 1825 he entered Trinity
College, Cambridge. During his college life he and some friends,
under the leadership of Frederick Denison Maurice, formed
themselves into a society which they called ' The Apostles.'
These students conducted the Athene-urn at the time, and Trench
was a contributor to its pages.

In the year 1829, having just left Cambridge, he went on the
Continent. Bishop Wilberforce wrote of him in after-years,
' He has a soldier's heart under his cassock,' and he gave proof
of the truth of this assertion by joining a number of Cambridge
friends in an expedition which they undertook ' intent on carry-
ing out a generous but foolhardy scheme of giving liberty to
Spain.' But the attempt proved a miserable failure, and
Trench just escaped with his life. Had he remained behind
he would probably have shared the fate cf General Torrijos and

560 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

his followers, including Robert Boyd, a friend of Trench. All
of these were overtaken by the Spanish guardships, and were
put to death by military execution without any trial.

In 1832 he was ordained by the Bishop of Norwich, and worked
for some time at Hadleigh, under the Rev. Hugh James Rose,
at whose house, in 1833, the meeting took place which gave rise
to the ' Tracts for the Times.' On being ordained priest, he
took charge of the parish of Curdridge, near Southampton. It
was here that he is said to have been asked by a parishioner
whom he was visiting if he had ever tasted birch wine, to
which query he feelingly replied : ' No, but I have tasted the
birch-rod.'

In 1835 Trench's first and favourite book appeared. It was
a volume of poems entitled Justin Martyr and Other Poems.
During his incumbency of Curdridge he published his Notes on
the Parables of our Lord, a book which was recognised at once
' as coming from a master in Israel.' In subsequent years we
find him examining chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford, and (in
1846) Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. In 1848
he produced a. collection of the Best Latin Hymns and Other
Sacred Latin Poetry, Selected and Arranged for the Use of Members
of the Church. ' Specially noteworthy is it that the favourite
hymn, Jerusalem the Golden, is a translation of one of the hymnal
rhythms in this book, and that Trench was the writer that called
it from its long oblivion.' In the years between 1852 and 1862
appeared those books on the study of words which established
his reputation as an etymologist, and gave a new impetus to
the pursuit of a branch of knowledge which had been much
neglected.

In 1856 Trench was appointed to the Deanery of Westminster,
a position which was very congenial to his tastes. In the
Advent of 1857 ne opened the Abbey for service on Sunday
evenings, an innovation which has since become an established
custom. On the death of Archbishop Whately in 1863, he was
made Archbishop of Dublin, his consecration taking place in Christ
Church Cathedral, Dublin, on the ist of January, 1864. 'What
impressed me so deeply,' wrote an eye-witness, ' was the coun-
tenance itself — its utter unself-consciousness, its deep humility,
its intense devotion, its almost divine spirituality.' It was
during his archiepiscopate that the Irish Church was disestab-

GREATER POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 561

lished, but, as he himself put it, he stuck to the ship, even when
it was ' among the breakers.'

The end of the earthly scene came on Sunday, the 28th of March,
1886, and on the following Friday, in the presence of a multi-
tude of mourners, he was laid to rest beneath the sacred floor of
Westminster Abbey, amid a great company of the illustrious
dead. He had, like the Poet-Laureate in his Crossing the Bar,
himself depicted such a scene in his last poem, Timoleon,
published in 1881 :

And there shall wait on me
* * * * *

The golden tribute of a people's love ;
And when my work is ended, multitudes,
Apparelled all in white and crowned with flowers
As for a great day of high festival, •! « {,'
Shall with large tears of sorrow and of joy
Bear me a victor to my funeral pyre :
So limns itself the future to my sight.

At one period in his career — just before he went to the Con-
tinent— Trench was face to face with what he called ' the riddle
of existence.' He was rather tired of himself and of the world.
He thus describes the frame of mind :

I loved,

With others whom a like disquietude
At the like crisis of their lives now kept
Restless, to question to and fro,
And to debate the evil of the world
As though we bore no portion of that ill,
As though with subtle phrases we could spin
A woof to screen us from life's undelight :
Sometimes prolonging far into the night
Such talk, as loath to separate and find.
Each in his solitude, how vain are words
When that which is opposed to them is more.
* * * * *

Full of rebellious askings .for what end
And by what power, without our own consent
Caught in this snare of life we know not how,
We were placed here, to suffer and to sin,
To be in misery and know not why.

|. Later, after the foolish escapade in Spanish waters, he came
to his senses, and experienced the more lasting consolations

Of hope and joy, of life and death
And immortality through faith ;
Of that great change commenced within ;
The Blood that cleanses from all sin,
That can wash out the inward stain
And consecrate the heart again ;

36

562 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The voice that clearer and more clear
Doth speak unto the purged ear ;
The gracious influences given
In a continued stream from heaven ;
The balm that can the soul's hurt heal,
The Spirit's witness and its seal.

His description of a poet is an inspiration which poets would,
do well to lay firmly to heart. He describes him as

A counsellor well fitted to advise

In daily life, and at whose lips no less

Men may inquire or nations, when distress

Of sudden doubtful danger may arise ;

Who, though his head be hidden in the skies,

Plants his firm foot upon pur common earth.

Dealing with thoughts which everywhere have birth.

This is the poet, true of heart and wise,

No dweller in a baseless world of dreams,

Which is not earth nor heaven.

Trench resembles Wordsworth in his didactic verse. He
had, indeed, come under the influence of the greater poet. The
resemblance between the two writers is strikingly displayed in.
the poem A Walk in a Chiirchyard. It has been said that ' in
the arrangement of the sonnet he displayed a mastery equal to-
that of the Italian writers.' Some of his sonnets, such as that
on Prayer, for example, are amongst the best in the English
language. We will close our sketch of the Archbishop by-
quoting the lines which he himself considered to be his best : ,

Life bears us on,

And yet not so but that there may survive
Something to us ; sweet odours reach us yet,
Brought sweetly from the fields long left behind,
Of holy joy or sorrow holier still :
As I remember when, long years ago.
With the companions of my youth I rode
'Mid Sicily's holm oaks and pastoral dells
All in the flowery Spring, through fields of thyme,
Fields of all flowers — no lovelier Enna knew—-
There came to us long after, blown from these,
Rich odours that pursued us many a mile.
Embalming all the air : so rode we on,
Though we had changed our verdant meadow-paths.
For steep rough tracks up dusty river-beds,
Yet haunted by that odorous fragrance still.

Then let us be content in spirit, though
We cannot walk as we are fain to do
Within the solemn shadow of our griefs
For ever : but must needs come down again
From the bright skirts of those protecting clouds.
To tread the common paths of earth anew.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 563

Then let us be content to leave behind us

So much ; which yet we leave not quite behind,

For the bright memories of the holy dead,

The blessed ones departed, shine on us

Like the pure splendour of some clear large star

Which pilgrims, travelling onward, at their backs

Leave, and at every moment see not now ;

Yet, whensoe'er they list, may pause and turn

And with its glories gild their faces still.

MINOR POETS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

ENGLISH POETS

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) was born at Newington Green, a
suburb of London. He was educated privately, and was placed
in his father's banking-house while quite a youth. He subse-
quently rose to be a nominal partner in the concern. He was
very wealthy, and was therefore able to devote himself to litera-
ture and ' the society of men distinguished in politics, literature,
and art.' He was enabled, also, ' to enrich his house in St.
James's Place with some of the finest and rarest pictures, busts,
books, gems, and other articles of virtu, and to entertain his friends
with a generous and unostentatious hospitality. . . . It is grati-
fying to add that his bounty soothed and relieved the death-bed
of Sheridan, and was exerted to a large extent annually in behalf
of suffering or unfriended talent.' His chief works are The
Pleasures of Memory (1792) ; Human Life (1819) ; Italy (1822), and
Jacqueline, a tale published in conjunction with Byron's Lara,
in 1814. His first appearance was in 1786, as author of an Ode
to Superstition, with Some Other Poems. He was ' a careful and
fastidious writer.' He says, in his Table Talk, ' I was engaged
for nine years on The Pleasures of Memory ; on Human Life
for nearly the same space of time ; and Italy was not completed
in less than sixteen years.'

Rogers was a wit, and his sayings have often been quoted in
proof of this fact. It is said that on one occasion he tried to

36—2

564 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

extort a confession from Sir Philip Francis that he was the
author of the letters of Junius, but Francis snubbed him, and
Rogers afterwards remarked that if he was not Junius, he was at
least Brutus.

FROM ' THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY '

Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green,
With magic tints to harmonize the scene.
Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke,
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play,
And games and carols closed the busy day.
Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more
With treasured tales and legendary lore.
All, all are fled ; nor mirth nor music flows
To chase the dreams of innocent repose.
All, all are fled ; yet still I linger here !
What secret charms this silent spot endear !

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was born in comparatively humble
circumstances. He was educated, however, at Christ's Hospital,
and at an early age entered the field of literature. He was
originally intended for the ecclesiastical profession, but an im-
pediment in his speech prevented this project from being carried
out, and he had to content himself with a clerkship in the East
India Company's service. His devotion to his sister, to one of
whose fits of insanity their mother had fallen a victim, forms the
most beautiful trait in his character. He was a great friend and
admirer of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was his schoolfellow.
He is chiefly remembered as the author of the famous Essays of
Elia and the tales compiled by himself and his sister from the
plays of Shakespeare, but his first compositions were in verse.
His tragedy, John Woodvil, which appeared in 1801, was merci-
lessly criticised in the Edinburgh Review, though there is much in
it that is excellent. In 1830 he published a volume of poems,
entitled Album Verses, which contains some meritorious pieces.
His best-known poem is entitled Old Familiar Faces.

I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

The Hon. and Very Rev. William Herbert (1778-1847), who
eventually became Dean of Manchester, published, in 1806, a
series of translations from the Norse, Italian, Spanish, and
Portuguese. He also wrote an original poem entitled Helga,

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 565

which gives a description of Scandinavian history and customs.
In 1838 he published an epic poem called Attila, which was
' founded on the establishment of Christianity by the discomfiture
of the mighty attempt of the Gothic King to establish a new
antichristian dynasty upon the wreck of the temporal power of
Rome at the end of the term of 1,200 years, to which its duration
had been limited by the forebodings of the heathens.'

How oft, at midnight, have I fixed my gaze
Upon the blue unclouded firmament,
With thousand spheres illumined ; each perchance
The powerful centre of revolving worlds !

Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was born at Malpas, in
Cheshire, and educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1802
he obtained the prize for Latin hexameters, his subject being
Carmen Seculare. In 1803 he turned his attention to English
verse, and wrote Palestine, which is held to be the best prize-
poem the University of Oxford has ever produced. The story
is told how, before reciting it in the Sheldonian Theatre, Heber
read the poem to Sir Walter Scott, who was then on a visit to the
University. Sir Walter said that one striking circumstance con-
nected with the building of Solomon's Temple had escaped the
notice of the young poet, namely, the fact that no tools were
used in its construction. Heber thereupon retired to a corner of
the room, and in a few minutes came back with the lines which
have since become famous :

No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung ;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence !

He graduated B.A. in 1805, and obtained the prize for the best
English essay the same year. He became a Fellow of All Souls,
and soon after travelled in Germany and Russia, He graduated
M. A. on his return, and in 1809 published a poem entitled Europe,
or Lines on the Present War. He was presented soon afterwards to
the Rectory of Hodnet, where he remained until, in 1823, he was
appointed Bishop of Calcutta. After an important journey to
Travancore, the Bishop was found dead one day in his bath.
Besides the Bampton Lectures of 1815 and a Life of Jeremy Taylor
which he published in 1822, Heber was the author of a number of
beautiful poems, chiefly religious in tone. The most popular

566 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

of these is the missionary hymn, From Greenland's Icy Mountains,
which alone would have made its author famous.

FROM 'PALESTINE'

Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,
Mourn, widowed queen ! Forgotten Sion, mourn I
Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,
Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone ?
While suns unblest their angry lustre fling,
And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring ?
Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy viewed ?
Where now thy might, which all those kings subdued ?

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), the son of a West Indian
who resided in the United States of America, was born at South-
gate, in the county of Middlesex. He was educated at Christ's
Hospital, but was obliged to leave in his fifteenth year for a
peculiar reason, which he thus explains : ' I was then first deputy
Grecian, and had the honour of going out of the school in the
same rank, at the same age, and for the same reason as my friend
Charles Lamb. The reason was that I hesitated in my speech. It
was understood that a Grecian was bound to deliver a public speech
before he left school, and to go into the Church afterwards ; and
as I could do neither of these things a Grecian I could not be.'
Hunt had written some respectable poems even at this early age,
and his father published them, having first secured a large
number of subscribers. In 1805 his brother started a paper calleii
The News, for which James wrote dramatic criticisms, and in
1808 the two joined in editing The Examiner, which became
immensely and deservedly popular. But, unfortunately, James
was led in an unguarded moment to libel the Regent by referring
to him as ' a fat Adonis of fifty,' and for this indiscretion he had
to serve a term of imprisonment. The two years spent in con-
finement were the happiest of his life. He was visited by Charles
Lamb, Moore, Byron, and other congenial spirits, besides being
allowed to decorate his room to an extent which made him almost
childishly proud of the result. On his release he published The
Story of Rimini, an Italian tale in verse (1816). In 1822 he went
to Italy, and was associated with Byron and Shelley in the editing
of The Liberal, But Shelley died, and the two remaining poets
quarrelled. Two other volumes of poetry, entitled respectively
Foliage and The Feast of the Poets, had been published. Hunt
was a prolific writer of prose as well as of verse. During his later

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 567

years he was endowed by the Crown with a pension of £200. Of
all Leigh Hunt's poems perhaps the best known is a short one of
eighteen lines, entitled Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel, which is
included in almost every book of popular recitations.

FROM 'A DIRGE'

Blest is the turf, serenely blest,

Where throbbing hearts may sink to rest,

Where life's long journey turns to sleep, *

Nor ever pilgrim wakes to weep.

Bryan Waller Procter (1790-1874), better known as ' Barry
Cornwall,' was a native of London, and was educated at Harrow,
where he enjoyed the friendship of Lord Byron. He was called
to the Bar, and became one of the Commissioners in Lunacy.
He first appeared as a poet in 1815, when a small volume of
Dramatic Scenes appeared, written ' in order to try the effect of
a more natural style than that which had for a long time prevailed
in our dramatic literature.' The venture proved a complete
success. He subsequently published three volumes of poems —
A Sicilian Story, Marcian Colonna, and The Flood of Thessaly
(1823). Other works of his include Effigies Poeticce and English
Songs (1832). ' He ranks,' says Mr. Shaw, ' as one of the most
impersonal of our poets, being especially fond of identifying him-
self with emotions and situations to which his actual nature was
least akin. Of this propensity the most popular of his English
songs, The Sea ! the Sea ! the Open Sea ! is an amusing illustra-
tion, for he hated the sea. His tragedy of Mirandola was acted
at Covent Garden in 1821.

KING DEATH

King Death was a rare old fellow,

He sat where no sun could shine,
And he lifted his hand so yellow,

And poured out his coal-black wine.
Hurrah for the coal-black wine !

There came to him many a maiden

Whose eyes had forgot to shine,
And widows with grief o'erladen,

For a draught of his coal-black wine.
Hurrah for the coal-black wine !

The scholar left all his learning,

The poet his fancied woes,
And the beauty, her bloom returning,

Like life to the fading rose.

Hurrah for the coal-black wine !

568 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

All came to the rare old fellow,

Who laughed till his eyes dropped brine,

And he gave them his hand so yellow,

And pledged them in Death's black wine.
Hurrah for the coal-black wine !

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was a native of London,
though of foreign extraction, being the elder son of an Italian
exile and half-English mother. He was distinguished alike as a
painter and as a poet. He helped to found what is known in the
artistic world as the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1850 he
founded a periodical called The Germ, which was to be the organ
or mouthpiece of the Brotherhood. This venture was not a suc-
cess, and came to an end abruptly with the fourth issue. But
it served the purpose of bringing Rossetti into prominence as a
poet. The Blessed Damozel and Sister Helen have been much
admired. In 1861 appeared a volume of translations entitled
The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri
(1100-1200-1300), in the original metres, together with Dante's
' Vita Nuova.' In 1870 he published a volume of Poems, nearly
all of which are ' in form and colour, subject and style of treat-
ment, similar to the pre-Raphaelite pictures.' These poems
reached a second edition the same year. In 1881 a second
volume appeared entitled Ballads and Sonnets. In this the
sonnets form a sequence called The House of Life. It is quite
possible that, when the verdict of time has been arrived at, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti may take a high rank amongst the writers of
English poetry. His father, Mr. G. Rossetti, was Professor of
Italian at King's College, London, and the author of a commen-
tary on Dante, after whom he doubtless called his son. The
poet's daughter, Christina Gabriela Rossetti, has earned a high
reputation for her poems.

FROM 'THE BLESSED DAMOZEL'

The blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of heaven ;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters stilled at even ;
She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.
* * * * *

From the fixed place of heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove

Within the gulf to pierce
Its path ; and now she spoke as when

The stars sang in their spheres.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 569

William Taylor (1765-1836) was one of the first to translate
German poetry into English. A translation of Burger's Lenore
appeared in 1796. It impressed Sir Walter Scott so much that
he made an attempt to outdo it, but he could not beat Taylor's
version. A collection of works was issued in 1830, entitled A
Survey of German Poetry. A writer in the Quarterly Review says :
' Mr. Taylor must be acknowledged to have been the first who
effectually introduced the modern poetry and drama of Germany
to the English reader, and his versions of the Nathan of Lessing,
the Iphigenia of Goethe, and Schiller's Bride of Messina, are not
likely to be supplanted, though none of them are of the same
order with Coleridge's Wallenstein.'

William Sotheby (1757-1833) was born in London. He re-
ceived his education at Harrow, and entered the army. He retired
from the service in 1780, and followed literature as a profession.
His principal works are A Poetical Description of Wales (1789), a
translation of the Georgics of Virgil, and Constance de Castille.
The two latter were published in 1800 and 1810 respectively. He
also translated the Iliad in 1831, and the Odyssey in 1832. Much
praise has been bestowed upon his translation of Wieland's
Oberon. His poetical works include a poem written in 1799 in
commemoration of the Battle of the Nile, a poem in blank verse
entitled Saul, etc. He is also to be counted amongst the English
dramatists as the author of a play called Julian and Agnes, which,
though Mrs. Siddons took part in it, was a failure.

Edward Hovell, Lord Thurlow (1781-1829), was the author of
several small volumes of poems, which, though sometimes lack-
ing in taste, are not without sterling merit. Select Poems ap-
peared in 1821, and was followed by Poems on Several Occasions ;
Arcita and Palamon, after Chaucer ; Angelica ; or, The Fate of
Proteus ; etc. He wrote some sonnets.

Edwin Atherstone (1788-1872) was the author of two poems in
blank verse entitled The Last Days of Herculaneum (1821) and
The Fall of Nineveh (1828). The subjects are treated with a con-
siderable amount of skill, though here and there may be found
traces of unnecessary gloom and extravagant bombast.

The Rev. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850) was born at King's
Sutton, on the borders of Northamptonshire. He was educated

570 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

at Westminster School and at Tirnity College, Oxford. In 1805
he was presented to the living of Bremhill, in Wiltshire, then a
valuable benefice. He was the author of The Village Verse-Book,
The Missionary of the Andes (1815), Days Departed (1828),
St. John in Patmos (1833), and other poetical works. He
' delighted and inspired ' the genius of Coleridge, and also
influenced the works of Southey and Wordsworth. The first
of his publications was a volume of sonnets published in 1789.
In 1805 this collection, which had been added to from time to
time, had reached its ninth edition.

The Right Hon. John Hookham Frere (1769-1846), who had
charge of British affairs in Spain under General Sir John Moore,
was the author of a curious poetical production with the prosaic
title of A Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work,
by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk,
Harness and Collar Makers. Intended to comprise the most Inter-
esting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table.
It turned out to be 'a happy imitation of the Pulci and
Casti school of Italian poetry.' Lord Byron professes to have
modelled his Venetian story of Beppo ' on or after the excellent
manner of Mr. Whistlecraft.' Writing to Mr. Murray con-
cerning Beppo, he says : ' It has politics and ferocity. Whistle-
craft is my immediate model, but Berni is the father of that
kind of writing ; which, I think, suits our language, too, very
well.' To John Hookham Frere, therefore, according to Lord
Byron, must be accorded the credit of having introduced the
Bernesque style into our poetry. The stanza in which he wrote
is called ottava rima, and is that adopted by Byron in Beppo and
Don Juan. This is the first verse of the Whistlecraft effusion :

I've often wished that I could write a book,
Such as all English people might peruse ;

I never should regret the pains it took,

That's just the sort of fame that I should choose :

To sail about the world like Captain Cook,
I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse,

And we'd take verses out to Demerara,

To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.

The whole work is now deservedly forgotten. Mr. Frere was
educated at Eton, and while there composed a clever war-song
which was admired by Sir Walter Scott. A collection of this
poet's works was published in 1871.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 571

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) was born in London.
He was educated at Westminster School, where he evinced a
strong taste for theatrical performances. He went to Oxford,
but left after a short while, and proceeded to Germany to study
modern languages. He is best known as the author of a romance
entitled The Monk, in which his most successful efforts in verse
are to be found.

FROM ' ALONZO THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR IMOGENE »

A warrior so bold, and a virgin so bright,

Conversed as they sat on the green ;
They gazed on each other with fender delight :
Alonzo the Brave was the name of the knight —

The maiden's, the Fair Imogene.

The Hon. William Robert Spencer (1770-1834) was the author
of a number of fugitive poems of the kind known as vers de
societe. His works were collected and published in 1835. A
notable poem is that on Beth Gelert ; or, The Grave of the
Greyhound, the story of which is too well known to need re-
capitulation.

Henry Luttrett (1770-1851) was one of the brilliant circle who
used to meet at Holland House in its best days. He was the
author of Advice to Julia : a Letter in Rhyme (1820), and Crock-
ford House (1827). He was a witty and graceful conversation-
alist.

Dr. Frank Sayers (1763-1817) was a native of Norwich, and
a member of the medical profession. He published Dramatic
Sketches of the Ancient Northern Mythology, in 1790 ; Disquisi-
tions, Metaphysical and Literary, in 1793 ; Nugce Poetics, in 1803 ;
Miscellanies, in 1805 ; and other works. His collected works
were reissued by William Taylor, in 1823. Southey admitted
that even in 1826 Sayers was ' out of date.'

Helen Maria Williams (1762-1827), a prolific writer in prose
and verse, published her collected poems in 1823. The volume
contains a pretty sonnet on Hope, to which this note is attached :
' I commence the sonnets with that to Hope, from a predilection
in its favour, for which I have a proud reason : it is that of
Mr. Wordsworth, who lately honoured me with his visits while
at Paris, having repeated it to me from memory after a lapse
of many years.'

572 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

SONNET TO HOPE

Oh, ever skilled to wear the form we love !

To bid the shapes of fear and grief depart ;
Come, gentle Hope ! with one gay smile remove

The lasting sadness of an aching heart.
Thy voice, benign enchantress ! let me hear ;

Say that for me some pleasures yet shall bloom,
That Fancy's radiance, Friendship's precious tear,

Shall soften, or shall chase, misfortune's gloom.
But come not glowing in the dazzling ray,

Which once with dear illusions charmed my eye.
Oh, strew no more, sweet flatterer ! on my way

The flowers I fondly thought too sweet to die ;
Visions less fair will soothe my pensive breast,
That asks not happiness, but longs for rest.

George Canning (1770-1827), the great statesman whose
history is so well known to every student, was the author of
some remarkable poems, which he contributed to the Anti- Jacobin
Review. They include some clever parodies on Southey and
Darwin, a satire on French principles entitled New Morality,
etc. All are full of genuine fun and pungent wit. He also
contributed a great part of The Rovers, a burlesque on the
sentimental German drama, his Song by Rogers being one of his
sprightliest. It begins :

Whene'er with haggard eyes I view
This dungeon that I'm rotting in,
I think of those companions true
Who studied with me at the U —
niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.

The well-known lines —

So down thy hill, romantic Ashborne, glides
The Derby-Dilly, carrying three insides

— occur in a parody on Darwin's Loves of the Plants, entitled
Loves of the Triangles. Canning, moreover, could write serious
poetry with a master hand, as is proved by his pathetic Epitaph
on his Son.

Thomas James Matthias (died in 1835) was the author of some
poetical works which are now almost entirely forgotten. He
was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated
in 1774. A ripe scholar, he translated several English poems
into Italian, and wrote some Latin odes. He wrote also some
Runic Odes, imitated from the Norse Tongue ; a satirical poem
entitled The Shade of Alexander Pope (1798) ; and a richly anno-
tated poem entitled Pursuits of Literature.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 573

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838) contributed a large
number of poems to various journals over the initials ' L. E. L.'
She was born in Chelsea, her father being an army agent. She
married, in 1838, a Mr. George Maclean, who was Governor of
the Gold Coast. She ended her days by taking prussic acid.
Her last verses are written about the Pole Star, which, in her
voyage to Africa, she had watched each night until it sank
below the horizon.

Jane (1783-1824) and Ann (1782-1866) Taylor were the
daughters of an engraver named Isaac Taylor, whose wife had
achieved some distinctions in the field of literature. The two
sisters were born in London, but were brought up at Lavenham,
in Suffolk. They became contributors to an annual called
The Minor's Pocket-Book, conducted by Messrs. Darton and
Harvey, who asked them to make a volume of verses for children.
Consequently they were able, in 1803, to issue a volume entitled
Original Poems for Infant Minds, which was followed, in 1806,
by Rhymes for the Nursery. Later there appeared Hymns for
Infant Minds, Rural Scenes, City Scenes, and other works. The
two best-known pieces in these collections are the popular poem
entitled My Mother, and the verses beginning ' Twinkle, twinkle,
little star.'

The Rev. Robert Montgomery (1808-1855) was a popular
preacher at Percy Chapel, Bedford Square, London. He published
a volume of poems which passed through several editions. Lord
Macaulay has handled him very roughly in one of his celebrated
essays, but there is beauty in Montgomery's poems for all that.
His chief poems are The Omnipresence of the Deity ; Satan ;
Messiah ; Oxford ; and Luther. The following lines will give an
idea of his style :

Ye quenchless stars ! so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,
While half the world is lapped in downy dreams,
And round the lattice creep your midnight beams,
How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,
In lambent beauty looking from the skies !

Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1847) was the son of an iron-founder
who lived at Masborough, in Yorkshire. He was the author of
Corn Law Rhymes, which were published between 1830 and
1836. He was essentially a poet of the working classes, and his

574 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

talents were of such an order that ' though sometimes leading
him beyond the limits of good taste, they claimed the recognition
of Sou they, Bulwer, Wilson, and Thomas Carlyle. Two lines
of his are worth quoting :

What is a Communist ? One who has yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings.

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839) is considered to be, next to
Thomas Moore, the most successful song-writer of the nineteenth
century. He was the son of a solicitor at Bath, and studied
for a while at Oxford, but did not take a degree. The best
known of his songs are She wore a Wreath of Roses; I'd be a
Butterfly ; Oh, no ! we never mention Him ; The Soldier's Tear ; and
We met — 'twas in a Crowd. He was unfortunate in the later
years of his life, and died of jaundice.

Noel Thomas Carrington (1777-1830) was a native of Devon-
shire. He was the author of two volumes of poetry in which
he sings the praises of his native county. His best poem is
entitled Dartmoor, which was published in 1826. The Banks
of Tamar and My Native Village are also worthy of mention.
One of his poems is on The Pixies of Devon, concerning whom
Mr. Drew, in his work on Cornwall, says : ' The age of pixies,
like that of chivalry, is gone. There is, perhaps, scarcely a
house which they are reputed to visit. Even the fields and
lanes which they formerly frequented seem to be nearly forsaken .
Their music is rarely heard ; and they appear to have forgotten
to attend their ancient midnight dances.'

The Venerable Francis Wrangham (1769-1843) was Rector of
Hunmanby and Archdeacon of Chester. He wrote a prize
poem on the Restoration of the Jews in 1795, and four Seaton
prize poems on religious subjects. He also edited Langhorne's
Plutarch, and was the author of various translations from
Greek and Latin authors. ' His macaronic verses, or sportive
classical effusions among his friends, were marked by fine taste
and felicitous adaptation.'

The Rev. Henry Francis Carey (1772-1844) was a classical
scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, and very learned in English,
French, and Italian literature. He published a translation of
the Inferno of Dante, in blank verse, in 1805, and a translation

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 575

of the Divina Commedia in 1814. He also translated the Birds
of Aristophanes and the Odes of Pindar. He was for some time
Assistant-Librarian in the British Museum.

William Stewart Rose (1775-1843), the second son of George
Rose, Treasurer of the Navy, was educated at Eton and Cam-
bridge. He became Reading Clerk to the House of Lords.
In 1803 he translated Amadis de Gaul, and in 1823 he published
an abridged translation of the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo,
and in 1831 he completed his best-known work, a translation of
the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. He also published a volume
of poems entitled The Crusade of St. Louis in 1810, with other
occasional works, such as sonnets, etc.

The Earl of Ellesmere (1800-1857) was the author of a transla-
tion of Goethe's Faust and Schiller's Song of the Bell. He
translated Hernani; or, The Honour of a Castilian, a tragedy by
Victor Hugo, in 1830, and was the author of a volume entitled
Translations from the German, and Original Poems, which appeared
in 1824. He was a son of the first Duke of Sutherland. His
original poetry is not very notable, though it sometimes rises
above mediocrity.

Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) translated Aristophanes into
English verse. He also edited some of the plays of Sophocles.

Viscount Strangford (1780-1855) was British Ambassador at
Lisbon and other foreign Courts. He published a volume of
Poems from the Portuguese of Camoens, with Remarks on his Life
and Writings, in 1803. Byron attacked him in English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers, though Moore, on the other hand, dedicated
an epistle to him.

Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), the eldest son of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, was born at Cleveden, and educated at Merton College,
Oxford. He went to London in 1818, and became a contributor
to the London Magazine. As a poet he is celebrated chiefly for
his sonnets, which are remarkably fine, and have been adjudged
by critics to be second only to those of Milton and Wordsworth.
He also wrote Essays, Lives of the Northern Worthies, etc. He
died at Ambleside in 1849. The PoetrY of Coleridge is ' of the

576 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

school of Wordsworth.' It is unequal in merit, but much of it
will live. The following is a typical sonnet by Hartley Coleridge :

TO SHAKESPEARE

The soul of man is larger than the sky,

Deeper than ocean — or the abysmal dark

Of the unfathomed centre. Like that ark,

Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,

O'er the drowned hills, the human family,

And stock reserved of every living kind ;

So, in the compass of a single mind,

The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,

To make all worlds. Great Poet ! 'twas thy art

To know thyself, and in thyself to be

Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny,

Or the firm fatal purpose of the heart

Can make of man. Yet thou wert still the same,

Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

Mrs. Caroline Southey (1787-1854) was the daughter of Captain
Charles Bowles. She lost her parents while still a child, and was
left to the care of a nurse, to whom she refers affectionately in
her works. On the 5th of June, 1839, she married Robert
Southey, the poet, one of whose poems, Robin Hood, she com-
pleted. Mrs. Southey's best-known poem is a lyric entitled
The Pauper's Deathbed, but she was the author of several volumes
of poetry, including Ellen Fitz-Arthur (1820), The Widow's Tale,
and Other Poems (1822), and Solitary Hours, Prose and Verse
(1826). She was the poet's second wife. The Pauper's Deathbed

begins thus :

Tread softly — bow the head —
In reverent silence bow —
No passing-bell doth toll,
Yet an immortal soul
Is passing now.

And ends thus :

The sun eternal breaks —
The new immortal wakes —
Wakes with his God.

Henry Gaily Knight (1786-1846) was the author of ' some
Eastern tales in the measure and manner of Byron,' which,
however, ' failed in exciting attention.' They are Ildirim, a
Syrian Tale (1816) ; Phrosyne, a Grecian Tale (1817) ; andAlashtar,
an Arabian Tale (1817). These poems, though unsuccessful,
are not without merit. They have been acknowledged to
possess ' poetical taste and correctness in the delineation of
Eastern manners.'

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 577

John Clare (1793-1864), the son of pauper parents, was born
at Helpstone, near Peterborough. He was self-educated, and
succeeded, in 1820, in selling a collection of his poems to Messrs.
Taylor and Hessey for £20. It was duly published with the
title Poems descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, by John Clare,
a Northamptonshire Peasant. It brought him ' a small fortune.'
Several noblemen patronized him, and he was endowed by
them with a pension of £30 a year. In 1821 a second volume
appeared, entitled The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems. His
verses are full of charm.

WHAT IS LIFE ?

And what is life ? An hourglass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream.

Its length ? A minute's pause, a moment's thought.
And Happiness ? A bubble on the stream,

That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

James (1775-1839) and Horace (1779-1849) Smith were volu-
minous writers. James was a contributor to the London Review
and the Monthly Mirror. It was in the Monthly Mirror that,
in the year 1812, the series of poems known as the Rejected
Addresses appeared. The directors of Drury Lane Theatre had
offered a prize for the best prologue for the opening of the new
play-house. The two brothers thereupon spent six weeks com-
posing a number of humorous pieces professing to be the work
of the most eminent poets of the day. James wrote the imita-
tions of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, and Cobbett,
while Horace was the author of those of Johnson, Scott, Moore,
and others. James wrote little besides, but Horace wrote a
number of other works in poetry and prose.

Bernard Barton (1784-1849) was commonly known as ' The
Quaker Poet.' He was the author of a volume of poems entitled
Metrical Effusions, which appeared in 1812 ; Napoleon, and Other
Poems (1822); Poetic Vigils (1824); and Devotional Verses (1826).
A critic, writing in the Edinburgh Review, says of Barton's
works : ' The staple of the whole poems is description and
meditation — description of quiet home scenery, sweetly and
feelingly wrought out — and meditation overshadowed with
tenderness and exalted by devotion.'

37

578 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

TO THE EVENING PRIMROSE

Fair flower, that shunn'st the glare of day,

Yet lov'st to open, meekly bold,
To evening's hues of sober gray,

Thy cup of paly gold ;

Be thine the offering owing long

To thee, and to this pensive hour,
Of one brief tributary song,

Though transient as thy flower.

The Very Rev. Henry Hart Mil-man (1791-1868) was the
youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, Bart., President of the
College of Physicians. He was born in London, and educated
at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford. He won the Newdigate
Prize for a poem on Apollo Belvedere. In 1815 he wrote Fazio*
a Tragedy, and in 1818 he published Samor, a religious epic
founded on the legendary history of Britain, and The Fall of
Jerusalem, a dramatic poem. The Martyr of Antioch appeared
in 1821. He became Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1821.

Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854) was a native of Reading.
He was made a judge in 1840, and died on the bench whilst in
the act of addressing a grand jury at Stafford in 1854. He is
best remembered as the author of Ion, a very able tragedy.
Other tragedies by him are The Athenian Captive, The Massacre
of Glencoe, and The Castilian. He also wrote some prose works-.
Talfourd stands very high as a modern dramatic poet, his
characters being drawn with great power.

John Edmund Reade (died in 1870) was the author of The
Broken Heart, and Other Poems (1825), Cain the Wanderer and the
Revolt of the Angels (1830), Italy (1838), Catiline and The Deluge
(1839), Sacred Poems (1843), and other volumes of prose and
poetry. Italy, which is written in the Spenserian stanza,
resembles Childe Harolde a little. Other poems by this author
have been compared to the works of Wordsworth and Pen
Jonson.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839) was educated at Eton
and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Member of
Parliament, and for a short time, in the year 1835, held the
office of Secretary of the Board of Control. During his school-
days he started a paper called The Etonian, which he ran ia

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 579

conjunction with a schoolfellow — afterwards the Rev. John
Moultrie — who also was a poet. Praed contributed verses to
Knight's Quarterly Magazine, for which Lord Macaulay also
wrote. His poems were collected and published in 1844 by an
American publisher. They are of a ' fashionable ' character,
and are, to quote the words of Mr. Shaw, ' some of the most
remarkable that have appeared in modern times.'

David Macbeth Moir (1798-1851) was a contributor to Black-
wood's Magazine. His poetical works were published in two
volumes, in 1852, by Thomas Aird. He wrote under the signa-
ture of the Greek letter Delta. His works include Domestic
Verses (1843) and Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half
Century (1851). He was born at Musselburgh, where he subse-
quently practised as a surgeon.

The Rev. John Moultrie (1799-1874), as above mentioned, was
associated with Mackworth Praed in conducting The Etonian.
He eventually became Rector of Rugby. He was a contributor
to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and published two volumes
of verse, entitled My Brother's Grave, and Other Poems (1837),
and The Dream of Life, and Other Poems (1843). The Rev.
Derwent Coleridge, one of his fellow-students, has written a
memoir of this poet in a complete edition of his works, published
in 1876.

The Hon. Mrs., Norton (1808-1877) was a grand-daughter of
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In her nineteenth year she married
the Hon. George Norton, son of the first Lord Grantley, but the
union was an unhappy one and was dissolved in 1840. In 1877
she married Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, and died in June of the
same year. At seventeen she wrote The Sorrows of Rosalie, a
poem, which was published in 1829. In 1831 she published
another poem, entitled The Undying One, and in 1840 The Dream,
and Other Poems. In 1845 appeared The Child of the Islands, a
poem intended to draw the attention of the Prince of Wales to
the condition of the people, and in 1850 Tales and Sketches in
Prose and Verse. She also published some novels and other prose
works. Her poetry at times rises to a high level.

Thomas K. Hervey (1804-1859) was a native of Manchester.
He was for some years editor of The AthencBum and a contributor

37—2

580 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

to various other journals. He was the author of Australia, and
Other Poems (1824) ; The Poetical Sketch-Book (1829) ; The
English Helicon, etc. The Convict Ship is one of his best-known
poems.

Alaric A. Watts (1799-1864) was born in London. He was
editor of The Literary Souvenir (1824-1834) ; and of the Cabinet
of Modern Art (1835-1838). A pension of £300 a year was
accorded to him in 1853. He published Poetical Sketches in 1822,
and Lyrics of the Heart in 1850.

Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809-1885), was
educated by private tutors and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
He represented Pontefract in Parliament from 1837 to 1863, and
was raised to the Peerage by Lord Palmerston. He died suddenly
at Vichy. Poems of Many Years appeared in 1838, and Collected
Poetical Works in 1876. Poetry for the People was published in
1840, and Poems, Legendary and Historical, in 1844. He also
published a number of works in prose, including a biography of
Keats. Lord Houghton's poetry is of a very superior kind, and
was very popular in his own day. !'£j

Francis St. Clair Erskine, Earl of Rosslyn (1833-1890), was
educated at Oxford, where he graduated M.A. He was a son of
James Alexander, third Earl, a General in the army, and became
an Ambassador Extraordinary to the King of Spain in 1878. He
also held the office of High Commissioner to the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland. His Sonnets and Poems, edited by
W. Earl Hodgson, were published in 1889. The volume is dedi-
cated, by permission, to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), son of the historian of
Nottinghamshire, Thomas Bailey, was the author of Festus
(1839). This poem is not likely to be forgotten for one thing :
it possesses the doubtful distinction of being the longest in the
English language, being twice the length of Milton's Paradise
Lost, and containing no less than 55,000 lines. It contains
amongst them an occasional gem like this :

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 581

The poem was written when its author was twenty-four years
of age, and was much admired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It
reached the eleventh edition in 1889. He died in 1902, at the age
of eighty-six. He published The Angel World in 1850, The
Mystic in 1855, and The Universal Hymn, 1867.

Thomas Cooper (1805-1892) was known as ' The Chartist Poet.'
He was born at Leicester, and was apprenticed to a shoemaker
at Gainsborough. He taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and
French, and at the, age of twenty-three became a schoolmaster
and Methodist preacher. In 1841 he became leader of the
Leicester Chartists, and was imprisoned soon afterwards in
Stafford gaol for sedition. There he wrote The Purgatory of
Suicides, a poem in the Spenserian stanza, and Wise Saws and
Modern Instances, a series of tales. He was also the author of
some novels.

Eliza Cook (1818-1889) was the daughter of a London trades-
man. She was from an early age a contributor to magazines,
and issued volumes of poetry in 1838, 1864, and 1865. She con-
ducted Eliza Cook's Journal from 1849 to 1854, and obtained a
pension of £100 in 1864.

Sydney Dobell (1824-1874), who wrote under the nom de plume
of ' Sydney Yendys,' was born at Cranbrook, in Kent. His
father was a wine-merchant near Cheltenham, and in the uncon-
genial atmosphere of the counting-house Sydney cultivated the
Muse with much success. His first and best poem is The Roman,
published in 1850. It has been alternately praised and ridiculed.
Balder and England in Time of War were issued between 1850
and 1856. Some of his work was written in conjunction with
Alexander Smith.

Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1803-1873), the great novelist,
was also a poet. He was educated at Cambridge, where he won
the Chancellor's gold medal for a poem on Sculpture. He also
published Ishmael, and Other Poems in 1829. He was the third
son of General William Earle Bulwer, of Wood Bailing and
Heydon Hall, Norfolk. He assumed the name of Lytton after
that of Bulwer in 1844.

Edward Robert, Earl Lytton (1831-1891), was educated at
Harrow and at Bonn. He was a poet, diplomatist, and states-

582 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

man. He was Viceroy of India from 1876 to 1880. In 1887 he
was sent as Ambassador to Paris, where he died. His nom de
plume was ' Owen Meredith.' He published several volumes of
poetry — Clytemnestra, a dramatic poem (1855) ; The Wanderer
(1859); Lucile, a novel in verse (1860) ; Fables in Song (1874), etc.

Richard Hengist Home (1803-1884) was educated at Sandhurst.
He joined the Mexican naval service, and took part in the fight-
ing at Vera Cruz and elsewhere. After passing safely through
many perils he returned to England and devoted himself to litera-
ture. He published his celebrated epic Orion in 1843, at the low
price of one farthing per copy, to show his contempt for the public
that would not buy poetry. He also published other books, in
one of which, A New Spirit of the Age, he was helped by Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. In 1852 he went to the Australian goldfields,
and returned in 1869. He died at Margate in 1884.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was the eldest son of the great
Dr. Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby. He was born at Laleham,
near Staines, and was educated at Winchester, Rugby, and
Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated with honours in 1844, and
was the next year elected a fellow of Oriel. He was Inspector of
Schools from 1851 to 1886, and Professor of Poetry at Oxford
from 1857 to 1867. His poetical works include The Strayed
Reveller, and Other Poems, published anonymously ; Empedocles '
on Etna, and Other Poems (1853) ; and Poems (1854). He
has been ranked as a poet with Lord Lytton, and is described as
' a classic and elaborate versifier, but without the energy and
fire of the true poet.' He was an Hon. LL.D. of Oxford and
Edinburgh. Lord Coleridge said of Matthew Arnold, ' Few
souls ever passed away with more hopes of acceptance ; few lives
more unstained have been led from childhood to old age.'

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), the great novelist,
was, like Dickens and Kingsley, secondarily a poet. The follow-
ing verse is from The Ballad of Bouillabaisse :

There is a street in Paris famous,

For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is —

The New Street of the Little Fields ;
And here's an inn, not rich and splendid,

But still in comfortable case ;
The which in youth I oft attended,

To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 583

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) was an author of ' spectral
and gruesome ' verse, which was much admired by Robert Brown-
ing. He was the author of some verses in early life which failed
to attract attention, and is now remembered as the writer of two
works which were not published until after his death. These are
entitled Death's Jest-Book (1850), and Poems (1851).

The Rev. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was unquestionably
one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was distin-
guished as a novelist, poet, theologian, and philanthropist. He
was the son of a Hampshire squire who took Holy Orders late in
life and became Rector of Clovelly, and afterwards of St. Luke's,
Chelsea. The son became Rector of Clovelly and Canon of
Westminster. To speak of his literary work at large would be,
as in the case of Thackeray and Dickens, outside the scope of our
present work, but his poetry is worthy of mention. In 1848 he
appeared as a dramatic poet, issuing The Saint's Tragedy, a story
of Elizabeth of Hungary, and in 1858 he published Andromeda,
and Other Poems. His best-known poem is the lovely lyric
(which is now a popular song) entitled Three Fishers went Sailing
out into the West.

The Rev. Isaac Williams (1802-1865) was a tutor and Fellow of
Trinity, Oxford, and later in life a parochial clergyman. He was
influenced greatly by the Oxford Movement, and wrote pdetry
which has been -described as ' full of tenderness and pathetic

sweetness.'

Love is like the ocean

Ever fresh and strong,
Which the world surrounding,
Keeps it green and young.

The Rev. Frederick William Faber (1814-1863), like Isaac
Williams, was a poet of the Oxford Movement. He was born in
Yorkshire, and educated at University College, Oxford, of which
he became Fellow. He was a friend of Wordsworth, who, on his
acceptance of a living, said ' England loses a poet.' Faber
eventually followed Newman into the Roman fold. He may be
accounted one of the finest hymn-writers England has produced,
many of his hymns displaying great tenderness of thought, com-
bined with simplicity of language. Souls of men ! why will ye,
scatter ? is looked upon as one of the best hymns in the language.

584 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

The Rev. Richard Barham (1788-1845) was the author of a
famous collection of poems known as The Ingoldsby Legends,
which he contributed to Bentley's Miscellany under the name of
' Thomas Ingoldsby.' The legends are very popular, and often
extremely humorous, but, of course, as poetry they do not rise to
a very high level.

The Very Rev. Henry Alford (1810-1871) was born in London.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained
a Fellowship in 1834. In 1857 he became Dean of Canterbury.
He was the author of School of the Heart, and Other Poems, Chapters
of the Greek Poets, etc. He was also the author of some very
popular hymns, one of the best known being the harvest hymn,
Come, ye thankful people, come !

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), the son of a cotton merchant,
was born at Liverpool. He was a man of noble character, and
greatly admired by the most eminent amongst his contemporaries,
Lord Tennyson amongst the number. He wrote The Bothie of
Tober-na-Vuolich(i848), Amours de Voyage (1849), an(^ Dipsychus
(1850). Matthew Arnold wrote a glowing tribute to his memory
in the poem Thyrsis.

Adelaide Ann Procter (1825-1864) was a daughter of ' Barry
Cornwall,' and the author of a number of beautiful poems.
Legends and Lyrics appeared in 1858, and was so successful that
a second series was issued in 1862. The larger number of her
poems appeared at first in Household Words. The best known
are The Lost Chord, which has become a very popular song, and
Per pacem ad lucem.

NOW

Rise ! for the day is passing,

And you lie dreaming on ;
The others have buckled their armour,

And forth to the fight have gone :
A place in the ranks awaits you.

Each man has some part to play ;
The Past and the Future are nothing

In the face of the stern To-day.

The Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875) was for forty-one
years Vicar of Morwenstrow, in Cornwall. He was the author of
eight volumes of verse of a somewhat eccentric kind. Among

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 585

them were The Quest of the Sangraal (1864) and Cornish Ballads,
and Other Poems (1869). Amongst his works is the ballad And
shall Trelawney die ?

The Rev. William Barnes (1801-1886) was known as 'The
Dorsetshire Poet.' He was born in the Vale of Blackmore, and
was at first a lawyer's clerk, then a schoolmaster, and finally, at
the age of forty-six, took Holy Orders. He became Rector of
Winterbourne Came, in his native county. At intervals he issued
his Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, which bid fair to
take rank as classics of their kind, and have received almost the
unanimous commendation of critics. Mr. Shaw says : ' They
consist of some hundred of pieces, severally purporting to afford
glimpses of life and landscape in Dorset, and delightful to all
lovers of such life most of them are.'

Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886) was for many years a valuable
servant of the Crown in the Colonial Office. He was the only son
of George Taylor, and was born at Wilton Hall, in the county of
Durham. In the field of literature he is chiefly known as a
dramatist, but his poetry is of a very elevated tone. . Amongst
his writings may be mentioned The Eve of the Conquest, and Other
Poems (1847) ; A Sicilian Summer, and Minor Poems (1868). His
first productions in verse were Isaac Commenus (1832) and Philip
van Artevelde (1834), both dramas.

John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) was celebrated as a poet,
historian, and critic. He was educated at Oxford, where he
obtained a Fellowship at Magdalen College. Failing health
necessitated his going to live at Davos-platz, in Switzerland,
where he studied and wrote for sixteen years. He published
Sketches and Studies, on Dante, the Greek poets, etc., as well as
works on the Renaissance in Italy (1875-1886) and Shakespeare's
Predecessors in the English Drama (1884).

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), like Thackeray and Charles
Kingsley, must be reckoned amongst the poets. An interesting
volume of his collected pieces, including some not previously
printed, has recently been published by Messrs. Chapman and
Hall. It is edited by Mr. F. G. Kitton, with biographical notes.

586 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Perhaps the prettiest of his pieces is that entitled The Ivy Green,
from Pickwick Papers.

THE IVY GREEN

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy Green,

That creepeth o'er ruins old !

Of right choice food are his meals I ween,

In his cell so lone and cold.

The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,

To pleasure his dainty whim :

And the mouldering dust that years have made,

Is a merry meal for him.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,

And a staunch old heart has he.

How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,

To his friend the huge Oak Tree !

And slily he traileth along the ground,

And his leaves he gently waves,

As he joyously hugs and crawleth round

The rich mould of dead men's graves.

Creeping where grim death has been,

A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,

And nations have scattered been ;

But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,

From its hale and hearty green.

The brave old plant in its lonely days,

Shall fatten upon the past :

For the stateliest building man can raise,

Is the Ivy's food at last.

Creeping on, where time has been,

A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Jean Ingelow (1830-1897), poetess and novelist, was born in
the county of Suffolk. Much of her poetry is of a religious tone,
but she also wrote some excellent ballads. Poems appeared in
1862, and went through fourteen editions in five years. A Story
of Doom, and Other Poems followed in 1867. She died at Kensing-
ton in 1897.

Charles Stuart Calverley (1833-1884) was a ' curious character
and rare parodist.' He wrote Verses and Translations, which
appeared in 1862, and Fly Leaves, published in 1872. His humour
is frequently irresistible.

Emily Bronte (1819-1848) was the second of the three famous
sisters of that name. She is chiefly celebrated as the author of
Wuthering Heights, a novel of singular power, but she also wrote
verses which have not been without admirers.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 587

Dora Greenwell (1821-1882) was the author of some poetical
works of some merit, of which the best is Carmina Crucis (1869).

Mrs. Amelia Opie (1769-1853) was more celebrated as a novelist
than she was as a poet, but in 1802 she published a volume of
poems which, though simple in treatment and manner, are excel-
lent in tone.

Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) is best known now as the author
of Tom Bowling, the ever-popular song, though he is said to have
written over a thousand sea-songs. He was an actor and
dramatist. He had two sons, Charles and Thomas, also drama-
tists and writers of songs, but of an inferior sort.

John Collins was one of the proprietors of the Birmingham
Daily Chronicle, and the author of a song called In the Downhill
of Life. He died in 1808.

Herbert Knowles (1798-1817) was born at Canterbury. He was
the author of a religious poem written in the churchyard of Rich-
mond, Yorkshire. It was published by Southey in an article
contributed by him to the Quarterly Review.

Charles Swain (1803-1874) was a native of Manchester. His
works include Metrical Essays (1827) ; The Mind, and Other
Poems (1831) ; Dramatic Chapters, Poems, and Songs (1847) ;
English Melodies (1849) > an<^ Songs and Ballads (1868).

The Rev. Henry Francis Lyte (died in 1847) was the author of
Tales in Verse (1830) ; Poems, Ballads, etc. He wrote some
beautiful hymns, amongst them the ever-popular Abide with me,
fast falls the eventide.

Sir Francis H. C. Doyle (1810-1888), Professor of Poetry at
Oxford, was the author of The Loss of the Birkenhead and The
Return of the Guards, both popular poems.

The Rev. George Rundle Prynne (1818-1903) was for fifty-five
years Vicar of St. Peter's, Plymouth. He published a collection
of his poetical works under the title of The Soldier's Dying Vision,
and Other Poems. But it is as a hymn-writer that he appealed to

588 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

the widest circle, the best known of his hymns being the one
beginning :

Jesu, meek and gentle,

Son of God most high,

Pitying, loving Saviour,

Hear Thy children's cry.

SCOTTISH POETS

William Mother-well (1797-1835) was a native of Glasgow.
At the early age of twenty-two he became editor of a miscellany
entitled The Harp of Renfrewshire. He had a great taste for
antiquarian research, and as a result of his studies he published,
in 1827, a collection of Scottish ballads entitled Minstrelsy
Ancient and Modern. To this work he prefaced a historical
introduction ' which must be the basis of all future investigations
into the subject.' He edited a weekly journal in Paisley for
awhile, and eventually rose to be editor of the Glasgow Courier.
He published his collected poems in 1832.

Robert Nicholl (1814-1837), born in Auchtergaven, in Perth-
shire, in humble circumstances, rose by great diligence to the
position of editor of the Leeds Times, an organ of the extreme
Liberal party. His poems are all short pieces contributed to
his paper from time to time.

Allan Cunningham (1784-1842) was born at Blackwood, near
Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire. In his sixth year he had the
good fortune to hear Robert Burns read his poem Tarn o' Shanter.
With a very scant education he evinced a great taste for the
acquisition of practical knowledge, and after serving his appren-
ticeship to his brother, who was a builder, went to London in the
year 1810. In 1814 he was appointed Clerk of the Works to the
eminent sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey, and in this position he
remained until his death. He has been described as ' a happy
imitator of old Scottish ballads,' which was early proved by his
contributions to the periodical literature of the day. In 1822
he published Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, a dramatic poem, and in
1832 The Maid of El-oar, a rustic poem in twelve parts. He also
wrote some works in prose. Four of his sons, Joseph, Alexander,
Peter, and Francis, have attained to distinction in literature.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 589

The best known of Cunningham's songs is A Wet Sheet and a
Flowing Sea.

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,

And bends the gallant mast ;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,

While, like the eagle, free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves

Old England on the lee.

* * * * *

There's tempest in yon horned moon.

And lightning in yon cloud ;
And hark, the music, mariners —

The wind is piping loud ;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,

The lightning flashing free — "
While the hollow oak our palace is,

Our heritage the sea.

William Tennant (1785-1848) was born at Anstruther, and
became a parish schoolmaster on £40 a year. He was the
author of ' a singular mock-heroic poem, Anster Fair, written
in the ottava rima stanza, since made so popular by Byron in
his Beppo and Don Juan.' The subject of the poem was the
marriage of Maggie Lauder, the famous heroine of Scottish song.
It became very popular, and has run through many editions.
Tennant was also the author of some other poetical works,
amongst them The Thane of Fife and The Dinging Down of the
Cathedral. He eventually became Professor of Oriental Languages
at St. Andrews University.

ABOUT MAGGIE LAUDER

Her face was as the summer cloud, whereon

The dawning sun delights to rest his rays !
Compared with it, old Sharon's vale, o'ergrown

With flaunting roses, had resigned its praise ;
For why ? Her face with Heaven's own roses shone.

Mocking the morn, and witching men to gaze ;
And he that gazed with cold unsmitten soul,
That blockhead's heart was ice thrice baked beneath the Pole.

fames Montgomery (1771-1854) was the son of a Moravian
missionary who died whilst engaged in the work in the island
of Tobago. He was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, and educated
by the Moravians at Fulneck, near Leeds. His first success as
a poet was achieved by the publication of The Wanderer in
Switzerland, which he issued in 1806. A great portion of his

590 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

life was spent in following the precarious occupation of a
journalist. He edited The Sheffield Iris, and was imprisoned
twice for imputed libels. In addition to the poem already
mentioned, he wrote two beautiful descriptive poems — Greenland
and The Pelican Island, which met with great favour ; The West
Indies (1809) ; The World before the Flood (181:2) ; and Prison
Amusements. He was awarded a pension of £200 a year for his
services to literature.

FROM ' GREENLAND '

'Tis sunset ; to the firmament serene

The Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene ;

Broad in the cloudless west, a belt of gold

Girds the blue hemisphere ; above unrolled

The keen clear air grows palpable to sight,

Embodied in a flash of crimson light,

Through which the evening star, with milder gleam.

Descends to meet her image in the stream.

PRAYER

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire

Uttered or unexpressed ;
The motion of a hidden fire

That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

The falling of a tear ;
The upward glancing of an eye

When none but God is near.

O Thou, by whom we come to God,

The Life, the Truth, the Way,
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod :

Lord, teach us how to pray !

The Baroness Nairne (1766-1845), whose maiden name was
Carolina Oliphant, was a member of the family of Oliphant of
Gask, and was ' justly celebrated for her beauty, talents, and
worth.' She was the author of a number of lyrical poems, some
of which are still very popular. Perhaps the best known are
Caller Herrin' , a popular song, and The Laird o' Cockpen.

Alexander Smith (1830-1867) was born at Kilmarnock. He
became famous on the appearance, in 1853, °f his Poems, the
most striking amongst them being A Life Drama, ' written
amid the toils of drawing patterns for a muslin house in Glasgow.'
The poem consists of a series of thirteen dramatic scenes. A
second volume, called City Poems, appeared in 1857, m which

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 591

.' the black streets of smoky Glasgow are glorified with poetic
light, which sometimes brightens to sublimity.' In 1861 appeared
a fine poem of the epic class entitled Edwin of Deira. He
joined with Sydney Dobell in a series of War Sonnets, and also
wrote some prose works.

A CHILD RUNS PAST

O them bright thing, fresh from the hand of God ;
The motions of thy dancing limbs are swayed
By the unceasing movement of thy being !
Nearer I seem to God when looking on thee.
'Tis ages since He made His youngest star,
His hand was on thee as 'twere yesterday.
Thou later revelation ! Silver stream,
Breaking with laughter from the lake divine
Whence all things flow. O bright and singing babe.
What wilt thou be hereafter ?

William Edmondstoune Aytoun (1813-1865) was born in
Edinburgh. While at college his poem of Judith attracted the
attention of Professor Wilson. His fame, however, now rests
chiefly on his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1848). He became
Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of
Edinburgh, and Vice-Admiral of Orkney. In conjunction with
Sir Theodore Martin he wrote the well-known Ballads by Bon
Gaultier, and translated the Poems and Ballads of Goethe. He
also wrote the historic romance of Bothwell, and a most pungent
satire on modern poets entitled Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy,
by Percy T. Jones.'

FROM ' THE BURIAL MARCH OF DUNDEE '

Sound the fife, and cry the slogan —

Let the pibroch shake the air
With its wild truimphant music,

Worthy of the freight we bear.

Let the ancient hills of Scotland

Hear once more the battle-song
Swell within their glens and valleys

As the clansmen march along !

Robert Pollok (1799-1827) was born at Muirhouse, Renfrew-
shire, studied at Glasgow, and became a minister of the
United Secession Church. He was the author of a long poem
in blank verse entitled The Course of Time, which is a work of
considerable merit, some passages of which have ' quite a

592 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Miltonic ring.' It is Calvinistic in tone, and is an essay on the
life and destiny of man. Pollok also wrote a prose work called
Tales of the Covenanters.

Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) was the daughter of a Scottish
minister, and was born in the manse of Bothwell, in the county
of Lanark, but lived the greater part of her life at Hampstead.
She wrote a number of plays, of which her tragedy De Montfort
is the best ; but besides her dramas she wrote some excellent
Scottish songs and other poems, which were collected and pub-
lished under the title Fugitive Verses.

FROM ' THE SHEPHERD'S SONG '

My sheep-bell tinkles frae the west,

My lambs are bleating near,
But still the sound that I lo'e best

Alack ! I canna hear. ,
Oh. no ! sad an' slow !

The shadow lingers still ;
And like a lanely ghaist I stand,

And croon upon the hill.

William Knox (1789-1825) was the author of The Lonely
Hearth, Songs of Israel, The Harp of Zion, and other poems.
Sir Walter Scott, in his diary, attributes to Knox ' a fine strain
of pensive poetry.'

Thomas Pringle (1788-1834), a native of Roxburghshire, was
one of the founders of Blackwood's Magazine. He was the
author of Scenes of Teviotdale, Ephemerides, and other poems.
He went to the Cape of Good Hope in 1820, with his father and
brothers, and established the little settlement called Glen Lynden.
His last work was entitled African Sketches, which was auto-
biographical, and interspersed with verses here and there.

Robert Gilflttan (1798-1850) was born at Dunfermline. His
Poems and Songs have passed through three editions.

Thomas Mouncey Cunningham (1766-1834) was the elder
brother of Allan Cunningham. He was a minor poet long
before his brother had come before the public as an author.

William Laidlaw (1780-1845) was a son of the ' Ettrick
Shepherd's ' master at Blackhouse. Lucy's Flittin' is ' deservedly
popular for its unaffected tenderness and simplicity.'

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 593

William Nicholson (died in 1849) was known as ' The Galloway
Poet.' He lived a dissipated life, and died a pauper. His
poems were edited in 1897.

James Hislop (1798-1827), born at Kirkconnel, near the
source of the Nith, was a. shepherd-boy who wrote at least one
striking poem, which was written ' at the grave of a party of
slain Covenanters.'

William Thorn (1789-1848) was known as ' The Inverury
Poet.' He was at different times a weaver and a travelling
pedlar. He first attracted notice by a poem entitled The Blind
Boy's Pranks, which appeared in the Aberdeen Herald, and in
1844 he produced a volume entitled Rhymes and Recollections
of a Hand-loom Weaver.

David Vedder (1790-1854), a native of Burness, in Orkney,
was the author of Orcadian Sketches, published in 1842. His
Scottish songs and Norse ballads were popular in his native
county.

The Rev Thomas Garratt (1796-1841) was born at Baddesley,
in Warwickshire. He was an M.A. of the University of Aber-
deen, and became eventually Vicar of Audley, having been for
a while private tutor to Mr. Gladstone. He published a number
of poetical works, the best of which is entitled The Pastor (1824).

George Outram (1805-1856) was the son of a manager of the
Clyde Ironworks. < He was the author of a small volume entitled
Lyrics, Legal and Miscellaneous.

John Campbell Shairp (1819-1885), Professor of Poetry at
Oxford, was the author of Kilmahoe, a Highland Pastoral (1864),
and of Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (1868). He eventually
became Principal of St. Andrews University. He also wrote
a Life of Burns and other works in prose.

William Bell Scott (1811-1890) was celebrated alike as a poet
and as a painter. Besides his paintings, which were chiefly
historical or poetical, he published five volumes of poetry.

Dr. Charles Mackay (1814-1889) was born at Perth. He was
editor of the Glasgow Herald (1844-1847) and of the Illustrated
London News (1848-1859), and New York correspondent of
The Times during the Civil War (1862-1865). He was celebrated

38

594 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

as a song-writer, two of his compositions, Cheer, Boys, Cheer! and
There's a good Time coming, being special favourites.

James Thomson (1834-1882), poet and pessimist, was born at
Port Glasgow. He was an army schoolmaster, from which post
he was discharged for a slight breach of discipline in 1862. He
afterwards lived a sad and desolate life in London, and died in
poverty in 1882. His chief works are The City of Dreadful
Night, and other Poems (1880), Vane's Story, Advice from the
Nile, and other Poems, etc. A collected edition of his works
was published in 1895.

IRISH POETS

The Rev. Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) was born in Dublin.
His literary reputation may be said to rest upon one short poem —
The Burial of Sir John Moore. The story goes that ' reading
in the Edinburgh Annual Register a description of the death
and interment of Sir John Moore on the battlefield of Corunna,
this amiable young poet turned it into verse with such taste,
pathos, and even sublimity, that his poem has obtained an
imperishable place in our literature.' The poem was published
anonymously in an Irish newspaper in 1817, and was for many
years unclaimed, until, in 1841, a Scottish teacher ' ungenerously
and dishonestly sought to pluck the laurel from the grave of-
its owner.' It was not until then that the friends of Wolfe
informed the public of the true authorship of the poem, whereupon
the false claimant confessed his imposture and expressed his
sorrow for the attempted fraud. Wolfe's literary compositions
were collected and published in 1825. The poem is too well
known to need an insertion here. The question as to whether
it was, strictly speaking, original, or merely an ' adapted transla-
tion ' from another poem on a similar subject, but in a foreign
language, has often been raised, but never quite settled. The
circumstances under which the burial of Sir John Moore actually
took place have also given food for controversy. But the
following account, taken from A Narrative of the British Army
in Spain (1809), by James Moore, Esquire, may be relied upon
as authentic :

' From a sentiment of veneration that has been felt in every
age, the corpse of a man who has excited admiration cannot be

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 595

neglected as common clay. This impression leads mankind
sometimes to treat an inanimate body with peculiar respect,
and even to bestow upon it unfelt honours.

' This was now the subject of deliberation among the military
friends of Sir John Moore who had survived the engagement,
when Colonel Anderson informed them that he had heard the
General repeatedly declare " that if he was killed in battle he
wished to be buried where he had fallen." General Hope and
Colonel Graham immediately acceded to this suggestion, and
it was determined that the body should be interred on the
rampart of the citadel of Corunna.

' At twelve o'clock at night the remains of Sir John Moore were
accordingly carried to the citadel by Colonel Graham, Major
Colborne, and the aides-de-camp, and deposited in Colonel
Graham's quarters.

' A grave was dug by a party of the gth Regiment, the A.D.C.
attending by turns. No coffin could be procured, and the body
was never undressed, but wrapped up by the officers of his staff
In a military cloak and blankets. Towards eight o'clock in the
morning some firing was heard. It was then resolved to finish
the interment lest a serious attack should be made, on which
the officers would be ordered away, and not suffered to pay
their last duties to their General. The officers bore the body
to the grave, the funeral service was read by the chaplain, and
the corpse was covered with earth.'

Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847), poet and translator, was
born in Dublin on the 24th of September, 1789. When eight
years old his parents removed to Baltimore, in the United States,
where he received his early education. In 1815 he was called
to the Bar, and soon rose to a position of eminence as a lawyer.
He was an accomplished linguist, and published translations
from French, Spanish, and Italian poets. His original poems
were justly appreciated. He died in New Orleans on the loth of
September, 1847. The following lines were much praised by
Lord Byron :

MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE

My life is like the summer rose,

That opens to the morning sky,
But ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground — to die.

38—2

596 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Yet on the rose's humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see —
But none shall weep a tear for me !

My life is like the autumn leaf,

That trembles in the moon's pale ray,

Its hold is frail — its date is brief,
Restless — and soon to pass away !

Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade,

The parent tree will mourn its shade,

The winds bewail the leafless tree,

But none shall breathe a sigh for me !

My life is like the prints which feet
Have left on Tampa's desert strand ;

Soon as the rising tide shall beat,
All trace will vanish from the sand ;

Yet, as if grieving to efface

All vestige of the human race,

On that lone shore loud moans the sea,

But none, alas ! shall mourn for me !

John Banim (1798-1842) was born in Kilkenny. With his
brother Michael he wrote Tales by the O'Hara Family, thought
by some critics to be the best delineation of Irish life yet pub-
lished, ' free from the theatricality of Lever and kindred writers/
They are characterized by powerful imagination, raciness, and
truth. His few good poems are gems.

SOGGARTH A-ROON (PRIEST, DEAR)

Am I the slave they say,

Soggarth aroon ?
Since you did show the way,

Soggarth aroon,
Their slave no more to be,
While they would work with me
Old Ireland's slavery,

Soggarth aroon.

James Joseph Callanan (1795-1829) was born in Cork. He
was for some time tutor under the celebrated Dr. Maginn, and
for awhile chose the lovely island of Inchidony, at the south of
Clonakilty Bay, as a hermitage, where he wrote some of his
best poems. His translations from the Irish are celebrated
for their grace and fidelity.

Thomas Osborne Davis (1814-1845), born at Mallow, was
celebrated as a poet and political writer. He was educated at
Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1836. He
was called to the Bar, but did not practise much at his profession.

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 597

He was one of the chief contributors to the Nation. His collected
poems were published in Messrs. Duffy and Son's National
Library.

Helen Selina Blackwood, Lady Dufferin (1807-1867), a sister
of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, and a granddaughter of Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, was a popular writer in her day. Her ballads
and poems were the genuine outcome of a real love of the people,
and had the effect of gaining for her their affection and respect.
Perhaps Lady Dufferin's most popular poem is The Lament of
the Irish Emigrant. The following is typical of her style :

O BAY OF DUBLIN !

O Bay of Dublin ! my heart you're troublin'..

Your beauty haunts me like a fevered dream ;
Like frozen fountains that the sun sets bubblin'

My heart's blood warms when I but hear your name.
And never till this life pulse ceases

My earliest thought you'll cease to be ;
O there's no one here knows how fair that place is,

And no one cares how dear it is to me.

Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886) was born in Belfast. He
was ' a man of encyclopaedic learning, great industry, and high
poetic power.' His well-known translations from the Celtic are
excellent, indeed ' unrivalled for truth and grace.' He was a
historian of high reputation.

Gerald Griffin (1803-1840), born in Limerick, was celebrated
as a poet and novelist. His novel The Collegians is said to be the
most perfect Irish novel ever published. ' After a life of anxious
labour, spent partly in London and partly in Ireland, he entered
the order of the Christian Brothers in 1838, and in their cemetery
he is buried.

EILEEN" AROON

When, like the early rose,

Eileen aroon !
Beauty in childhood blows,

Eileen aroon !
When, like a diadem,
Buds blush around the stem,
Which is the fairest gem ?

Eileen aroon !

James Sheridan Knowles (1794-1862), born at Cork in 1794,
takes rank in the history of our literature as the most successful of
modern tragic dramatists. His first play, Cains Gracchus, was

598 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

performed in 1815. It was followed by Virginias, one of the most
popular dramas of recent times. It is founded on the tragic inci-
dent, taken from Roman history, of a maiden being slain by the
hand of her father as a means of saving her from shame and
tyranny. The Hunchback and William Tell are considered to be
this author's best works. He also published The Wife, a Tale
of Mantua, Woman's Wit, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, The
Love Chase, etc. Two novels, Henry Fortescue and George Lovell,
were also written by him. A current of poetry sparkles through
his plays, ' not with a dazzling lustre,' as a writer in the Edinburgh
Review has aptly said, ' not with a gorgeousness which engrosses
our attention, but mildly and agreeably, seldom impeding with
useless glitter the progress and development of incident and
character, but mingling itself with them, and raising them
pleasantly above the prosaic level of common life.'

Sir Aubrey Hunt De Vere (1788-1846) was a native of
county Limerick. His name was Hunt, but he assumed that
of De Vere, in addition, in 1832. He was the author of two
dramatic poems, Julian the Apostate (1822) and The Duke of
Marcia (1823), and a volume dedicated to Wordsworth and
entitled A Song of Faith, and Other Poems (1842).

Aubrey Thomas De Vere (1814-1902) was the son of Sir Aubrey
De Vere, and was born at Currah Chase, county Limerick.
He was the author of a number of volumes of prose and poetry,
amongst them The Waldenses, with Other Poems (1842) ; The
Search after Proserpine (1843) ; Mary Tudor, a drama (1847) ;
The Infant Bridal, and Other Poems (1864), etc.

The Rev. George Croly (1780-1863) was a native of Dublin, and
educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He became Rector of
St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London. He was a prolific writer in
both poetry and prose. Mr. Shaw says ' his style was gorgeous
and his imagination fertile.' His chief poetical works are
Paris in 1815 (a description of the works of art in the Louvre) ;
The Angel of the World (1820) ; Verse Illustrations to Gems from
the Antique; Pride shall have a Fall, a comedy ; Catiline, a tragedy ;
Poetical Works, in two volumes (1830) ; The Modern Orlando, a
satirical poem (1846), etc. He also wrote historical works and

s
MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 599

some prose fiction. As an example of the ' gorgeousness ' of his
style we quote from Paris :

Magnificence of ruin ! what has time
In all it ever gazed upon of war,
Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare ?
How glorious shone the invaders' pomp afar !
Like pampered lions from the spoil they came ;
The land before them silence and despair,
The land behind them massacre and flame ;
Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now ? A name.

Samuel Lover (1798-1868) was born in Dublin. He began
life as an artist, but abandoned that calling for literature, which
was more congenial. He is, of course, best known as the author
of Handy Andy, an ' extravaganza novel ' of Irish country
life, but he was also the author of a number of popular songs,
such as The Angels' Whisper, Molly Bawn, The Four-leaved
Shamrock, etc. ' Fully as musical as Moore's, his songs are very
much more Irish in tone and colour, and may be taken as typical
of one side of the national character.'

FROM 'THE ANGELS' WHISPER'

And while they are keeping bright watch o'er thy sleeping,
Oh ! pray to them softly, my baby, with me ;

And say thou would'st rather they'd watch o'er thy father,
For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.

John Keegan (1809-1849) was born in Queen's County. He
was a peasant, and received his education at a hedge-school,
but was ' throughout his life emphatically a poet of the people.'

Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde (1826-1896), the daughter of
Archdeacon Elgee, was married in 1851 to Sir William R. W.
Wilde, a distinguished surgeon in Dublin and President of the
Royal Irish Academy. She wrote under the name of ' Speranza,'
and her collected poems were published in 1864.

William Allingham (1828-1889) was born in Ulster, and was
' long a respected man of letters in London.' In 1850 he pub-
lished The Music-Master, and Other Poems, which was followed
in 1854 by Day and Night Songs. Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland
is his most ambitious work, but is not generally looked upon
by critics as a success, whether it be viewed merely as a poem
or more particularly as a ' shedder of light upon the Irish
problem.'

600 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

George Darley (1795-1846) was successful as editor of the works
of Beaumont and Fletcher. His poetical works, which have
been recently reissued, include a beautiful lyric entitled The
Loveliness of Love.

Denis Florence M'Carthy (1817-1882) was born in Dublin, and
followed the profession of a barrister. In his day he was a
regular contributor to the Nation, and published several volumes
of original poems. His translations of Calderon's dramas are
thought to be the finest yet achieved.

Francis Davis (1810-1885), known as ' The Belfast Man,' was
born in Ballincollig, county Cork. He was a contributor to the
Nation, and, while engaged in pursuing the humble calling of a
weaver, edited the Bel/astman's Journal, and published three
volumes of poems. During the Catholic Emancipation movement
he helped the popular cause by means of his poetry.

Richard Dalton Williams (1822-1862), born in Dublin, was
educated in Carlow College, studied medicine in Dublin, and
took his diploma in Edinburgh. In 1851 he emigrated to
America, where he died of consumption, July, 1862. His
poems were issued in a collected form by the proprietors of the
Nation newspaper, in which journal the greater portion of them
had previously appeared.

ADIEU TO INNISFAIL

Adieu ! — The snowy sail
Swells her bosom to the gale,
And our bark from Innisfa.il

Bounds away.

While we gaze upon thy shore,
That we never shall see more,
And the blinding tears flow o'er,

We pray : —

Ma vuirneen ! be thou long
In peace the queen of song —
In battle proud and strong

As the sea.

Be saints thine offspring still,
True heroes guard each hill,
And harps by every rill

Sound free !

Dr. Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830-1882) was born in Glenosheen,
county Limerick. He emigrated to Boston, United States, in
1866, and remained there until a few months before his death,

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 601

which occurred in Dublin. Before he left Ireland he had already
achieved considerable distinction as a physician, poet, and
journalist, but his chief professional and literary work was
accomplished at the other side of the Atlantic. His chief poem
is entitled Deirdre. ' His poetical versions of the old legends
of Ireland embody manly thought and brilliant fancy in melo-
dious verse. His love and minutely accurate observation of
nature, and swift enthusiasm, gift his poems with a strong
fascination.' He was a brother of Dr. Patrick Weston Joyce,
the author of Irish Names of Places, and other well-known

works.

FROM THE ' DRINAN DOUN ' (SLOE-TREE)

The streams they were singing their gladsome song,
The soft winds were blowing the wild woods among,
The mountains shone bright in the red setting sun,
And my Love in my arms 'neath the Drinan Doun.

'Tis my prayer in the morning, my dream at night,
To sit thus again by my heart's dear delight,
With her blue eyes of gladness, her hair like the sun,
And her sweet loving kisses, 'neath the Drinan Doun.

The Rev. Francis Sylvester Mahony (1805-1866), better known
by his nom de plume, ' Father Prout,' was born in Cork. He
was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, but gave up his
cure and took to literature as a profession. ' His linguistic
powers, great learning, keen wit. and fecundity of rhyme placed
him in the first rank even among the brilliant band with whom
he was associated,.' Perhaps the most deservedly popular of his
poems is that entitled The Bells of Shandon, which begins :

With deep affection and recollection
I often think of those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood,

Fling round my cradle their magic spells.
On this I ponder, 'where'er I wander,

And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee ;
With thy bells of Shandon
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters of the river Lee.

Mrs. Alexander (1818-1895), wife of the Archbishop of
Armagh, was almost unrivalled as a writer of hymns for children.
Once in Royal David's city, There is a green hill far away, We
are but little children weak, and All things bright and beautiful,
are remarkable for simplicity of diction and earnestness of
religious spirit. Mrs. Alexander's maiden name was Cecil
Frances Humphreys.

602 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903) was born in Monaghan,
and rose to distinction as a journalist and politician. He went
to Australia in 1856, and became Prime Minister of Victoria in
1871. In 1873 he received the honour of knighthood. He died
in Paris in 1903. He was a writer of vigorous prose and excellent
poetry.

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) was the younger son of Sir William
Wilde, an eminent Irish surgeon and antiquary. He was educated
first at Trinity College, Dublin, but migrated subsequently to
Magdalen College, Oxford, where, in 1878, he won the Newdigate
prize for a poem on Ravenna. It was during his time at Oxford
that he started the ' aesthetic ' movement with which his name
was identified for a considerable number of years, but which
has now almost completely died out. Wilde was the author
of a volume of poems which appeared in 1881, and which were
very favourably received by a certain class of readers. The
poems were ' marked by a singular mixture of verbal felicity and
affected sentiment,' to quote the happy phrase of Mr. Chambers —
a criticism which might be taken as a description not merely of the
poems, but of the poet himself. He also wrote some novels and
several successful plays. In 1895 he was sentenced to two
years' imprisonment for a criminal offence. He was received
into the Roman Catholic Church before his death, which took-
place in 1900. His last work was a poem entitled The Ballad of
Reading Gaol.

John Francis Waller (1810-1894) was born in Limerick, and
was a member of a well-known Irish family of Cromwellian
origin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he
graduated B.A. in 1831, and eventually proceeded to the degree
of LL.D. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1833. He began at
an early age to indulge in literary exercises, and was one of the
first contributors to the Dublin University Magazine, of which
he became editor in succession to Charles Lever, the celebrated
novelist. At first he wrote under the name of ' Jonathan Freke
Slingsby.' His contributions consisted of articles and poems.
A number of his poems have been set to music, and some trans-
lated into the German language. Lord Houghton, better known
to the literary world as Richard Monckton Milnes, considered
Waller's Song of the Glass to be the best drinking song of the

MINOR POETS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 603

nineteenth century. Mr. Chambers says that ' Waller was
distinctly happy as a writer of what may be termed ceremonial
verse, and some of his odes on various public occasions are
successful attempts in a kind of writing in which it is very easy
to fail.' His principal poetical works are Ravenscroft Hall, and
Other Poems (1852), The Dead Bridal (1856), Occasional Odes
(1864), and Peter Brown (1872). He also edited the poetical
works of Goldsmith and Moore.

FROM ' CUSHLA-MA-CHREE '

Oh my loved one ! my lost one ! say, why didst thou leave me

To linger on earth with my heart in thy grave !
Oh ! would thy cold arms, love, might ope to receive me

To my rest 'neath the dark boughs that over thee wave.
Still from our once-happy dwelling I roam, love,

Evermore seeking, my own bride, for thee ;
Ah, Mary ! wherever thou art is my home, love,

And I'll soon be beside thee, mv Cushla-ma-chree.

WELSH POETS

William Ellis Jones (died in 1848) was a poet of superior
merit. He gained the Bardic Chair at Brecon Eisteddvod in
1822, and his works have been published.

Robert Williams (1767-1850) was a poet of considerable
abilities, whose bardic name was Robert ab Gwilym Dhu. His
poetical works, which appeared in 1841, are entitled Gardd
Eifion, and evince a talent of no common cast. ' The unaffected
but finished style in which they are written has rendered them
deservedly popular.'

John Black-well (1797-1840) was, in 1823, elected as Bard to
the Ruthin Cymreigyddion Society. He won many prizes for
his poems. A complete collection of them has been published
and edited by the Rev. Griffith Edwards. The volume is
entitled Ceinion Alun.

Peter Jones (1775-1845) was better known as Pedr Vardd.
He was the author of several prize poems, and was elected to
fill the Bardic Chair of Gwent on account of his poem The Giving
of the Law on Sinai. He is distinguished for correct, chaste,
and flowing versification, but is deficient in energy and invention.

APPENDIX I
THE SHAKESPEARE-BACON CONTROVERSY

THE time has long gone by when what is known as the Baconian
theory as to the true authorship of the plays which bear the
name of Shakespeare could be altogether ignored by the critic
and the historian. It was in the year 1852 that the attention of
the literary world was arrested by an article entitled ' Who wrote
Shakespeare ?' which appeared in Chambers' Edinburgh Journal.
This was the first English essay on a subject which had been
vexing the minds of some of the keenest literary critics for a con-
siderable time. Long before that date the Shakespearian author-
ship had been held by some of them as distinctly questionable:
Lord Palmerston and Lord Byron were amongst those who
doubted. Hallam fell a victim to the craze. In 1837 Lord
Beaconsfield put the following expression into the mouth of one
of the characters in Venetia :

' And who is Shakespeare ? We know as much of him as we
do of Homer. Did he write half the plays attributed to him ?
Did he write one whole play ? I doubt it.'

Again, in 1856, Delia Bacon, an American authoress, raised
the question of Shakespeare's claim. Her book was published,
with the aid of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who furnished it with a
preface. In the same year a letter on the subject was written by
William Henry Smith to Lord Ellesmere, followed, in 1857, by
a short treatise in which he pointed to Francis Bacon as the more
likely author. In 1859 appeared an essay in which Lord Camp-
bell sought to prove that the author, whoever he may have been,
was a trained lawyer, whereas there is no evidence whatever to

604

APPENDIX I 605

prove that Shakespeare was, or could have been, one. In 1867
Judge Holmes, in America, advocated Bacon's claims, as did also
Mrs. Potts, in England, in 1883. Whit tier says : ' Whether
Bacon wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am quite sure the man
Shakespeare neither did nor could.' James Russell Lowell refers
to the reputed author as ' The apparition known to moderns as
Shakespeare/ Oliver Wendell Holmes writes : ' I would not be
surprised to find myself ranged with Mrs. Potts and Judge
Holmes on the side of the philosopher against the play-actor.'
Mr. Gladstone said, with characteristic caution: 'Considering
what Bacon was, I have always regarded the discussion as
one perfectly serious, and to be respected.' John Bright went
further, and gave it as his opinion that ' Any man who believes
that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear is a
fool !' The number of writers on the subject is fast assuming
what the old-fashioned will consider to be alarming proportions.
Whether the individual student forms an estimate of the rela-
tive weights of the claims put forward on either side or not, it is
well for him to become conversant with the arguments. With
a view to aiding him in this respect we will briefly summarize a
few of the most striking points which are adduced in support of
the Baconian claim, presenting them in two divisions, as follows :

I. Arguments Against Shakespeare.

1. The plays Were never entered at Stationers' Hall in Shake-
speare's name, either by himself or by anyone else on his behalf.

2. It is said to be ' unquestionable ' that Shakespeare did not
write all the plays attributed to him, therefore ' someone ' wrote
those which are not his. All plays attributed to him are said to
fall into two groups — clever and commonplace. It is contended
that the same man could not have produced both.

3. Shakespeare does not appear to have had any education to
speak of previous to his going to London. How, in a few years,
did he become a philosopher ? It is impossible. He hadn't the
learning displayed by the author of the plays. Moreover, he
could not have obtained it in the time.

4. On retiring from the stage Shakespeare went back to his
native place, and took to farming as a means of livelihood. From
the date of his retirement until he died he wrote nothing, even if

606 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

he read anything. We are asked if it is likely that the author of
Macbeth and Hamlet, and all those plays which have been the
wonder of the intellectual world ever since, could so abandon all
his former literary pursuits ?

5. Shakespeare made a will, enumerating everything of which
he died possessed. No MSS., books, or copyrights are mentioned
in it. Thus, we are reminded, as he had said nothing while he
lived, so he left nothing behind him when he died which would
enable us to identify any particular play as the product of his
brain or pen.

6. He died in 1616. In 1623 there appeared a printed Folio,
fathered by Heminge and Condell, containing thirty-six plays
which they represented as being all that Shakespeare ever wrote,
though ' wholly without any authority from him, his executors,
or any of his family.'

7. We are assured, on the authority of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps,
that six of these plays had never been heard of before. This, of
course, raises a question as to the honesty of the publishers, who
asserted that they were the ' collected ' plays of Shakespeare.

8. The interval between 1587 and 1592 must have been the
chief period of his literary education, but there is not a particle
of evidence concerning his occupation or whereabouts during that
time.

9. If Shakespeare had been the author contemporary dramatists
would have been jealous of his prosperity. As it was, we have
only such a reference as that of Greene, who calls him ' an upstart
crow.'

10. That Shakespeare had any legal training is denied by Lord
Campbell and other critics.

11. Epitaphs attributed to him with some show of authenticity,
as well as the lampoon on Sir Thomas Lucy, and the wit-combats,
could not have been written by the same man that wrote the
plays.

12. The portrait of Shakespeare which appeared with the Folio
of 1623 is ' hard to digest ' as that of the man who wrote the
plays. It is, moreover, the only portrait which has the least
claim to a proved authenticity.

13. The five extant signatures are laid before us. We are
asked what we think of them, and what of the labour of writing
thirty-six plays in the same hand.

APPENDIX I 607

14. Ben Jonson, in enumerating the greatest wits of his own
time, gives us a list in which the name of Shakespeare is not
found.

15. Judge Webb, in a profound work entitled The Mystery of
William Shakespeare, says : ' What do we actually know of
Shakespeare ? Whether his immortalities were composed in
lodgings at Southwark, or in the chambers at Gray's Inn, we
know nothing — absolutely nothing — about him.' And of this
passage the Rev. W. A. Sutton, author of The Shakespeare
Enigma, says : ' It is an amazing fact which is thus graphically
expressed.'

These are some of the chief arguments urged by Lord Penzance
and others against the Shakespearian authorship. We will now
mention some of those adduced in favour of Bacon.

II. Arguments in Favour of Bacon.

1. Bacon was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and possessed
all that varied knowledge which is said to have been lacking in
Shakespeare's case.

2. Writing for the stage was accounted a disreputable occupa-
tion in those days. A man in the position of Lord Bacon would
naturally write plays, if he did so at all, under an assumed name,
so as not to disclose his identity.

3. It seems natural, we are told, that he should adopt the name
of the acting-manager under whom the plays were produced.

4. He would adopt the old course when, having enlarged and
improved his plays, he resolved to republish them in the Folio of
1623, with the assistance of Messrs. Heminge and Condell.

5. In many of Bacon's preserved letters there is ' something
suggestive of a curious undermeaning, impressing the reader with
an idea of more than appears on the surface.'

6. Some writers on this subject, notably Mrs. Elizabeth Gallup,
profess to have discovered in the plays the biliteral cipher of
Lord Bacon ' found embodied in his works.' Based upon this
discovery, we are assured, ' the proofs are overwhelming and irre-
sistible that Bacon was the author of the delightful lines attri-
buted to Spenser — the fantastic conceit of Peele and Greene — the
historical romances of Marlowe, the immortal plays and poems
put forth in Shakespeare's name, as well as the Anatomy of Melan-

608 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

choly of Burton.' By way of solace for this somewhat wholesale
attempt at disillusionment we are told that ' the plays of Shake-
speare lose nothing of their dramatic power or wondrous beauty,
nor deserve the less admiration of the scholar and critic, because
inconsistencies are removed in the knowledge that they came
from the brain of the greatest student and writer of that age, and
were not a ' flash of genius ' descended on one of peasant birth,
less noble history, and of no preparatory literary attain-
ments.

7. We have ' laid on the table ' a mass of so-called internal
evidence, in the shape of parallel passages, peculiar words, and
groups of words, which are common to the plays and the acknow-
ledged writings of Bacon. These are collected for us in such
books as The Authorship of Shakespeare, by Judge Holmes, and
The Great Cryptogram, by Ignatius Donelly. Even more striking
are 885 Parallelisms and twenty Coincidences collected and pub-
lished by Mr. Edwin Reed, of which we append examples :

8. Parallelisms

SHAKESPEARE BACON

Beast with many heads.' ' Beast with many heads.'

Coriolanus, iv. i (1623). Charge against Talbot (1614).

' Monster with many heads.'

Conference of Pleasure (1592).

' As the mournful crocodile ' It is the wisdom of crocodiles

With sorrow snares relenting pas- that shed tears when they would

sengers.' devour.'

2 Henry VI., in. i (1623). Essay of Wisdom (1625).

' Violets dim, ' That which, above all others,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's yields the sweetest smell in the air,

eyes is the violet, especially the white.'

Or Cytherea's breath.' Essay of Gardens (1625).
Winter's Tale, iv. 4 (1623).

4

' He looked upon things precious, as ' Money is like muck, not good

they were except it be spread upon the earth.'

The common muck of the world.' Essay of Seditions (1625).
Coriolanus, ii. 2 (1623).

APPENDIX I

609

SHAKESPEARE

Love is merely a madness.'
As You Like It, iii. 2 (1623).

BACON

' Transported to the mad degree
of love.' — Essay of Love (1612).

' Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellow'd.'

Winter's Tale, iv. 4 (1623).

' As I slept, methought
Great Jupiter, upon his eagle back'd,
Appeared to me.'

Cymbeline,'v. 5 (1623).

' You were also, Jupiter, a swan.'
Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5
(1623).

' The poet tells us that Jupiter
in pursuit of his loves assumed
many shapes — a bull, an eagle, a
swan.'

Wisdom of the Ancients (1609).

' The world on wheels.'
Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. i
(1623).

The third part [of the world], then,

is drunk ; would it were all,
That it might go on wheels.'

Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7
(1623).

' The world runs on wheels.'

Promus (1594-1596).

' You are so fretful, you cannot live ' To live long one must be

long.' — i Henry IV., iii. 3 (1598). patient.' — Promus (1594-1596).

' Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive

course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps

due on

To the Propontic and the Helles-
pont.'— Othello, iii. 3 (1622).

' In the Mediterranean Sea, a
slight ebb begins at the Atlantic,
but a flow from the other end.'

De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris
(1616).

' Cromwell, I charge thee, fling

away ambition :
By that sin fell the angels.'

Henry VIII., iii. 2 (1623).

' The desire of power in excess
caused the angels to fall.'

Essay of Goodness (1625).

Good wine needs no bush.'

As You Like It, Epilogue
(1623).

12

' He would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans are
but sheep.'

Julius CcBsar, i 3 (1623).

Good wine needs no bush.'
Promus (1594-1596).

' Cato, the censor, said that the
Romans were like sheep.'

Advancement of Learning
(1603-1605).

39

6io A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

It remains for us to mention one of Mr. Reed's Coincidences.

g. A Coincidence.

Bacon was a member of Gray's Inn ; he had lodgings there
during the greater part of his life. In close alliance with Gray's
Inn was the Inner Temple, the two fraternal institutions always
uniting in their Christmas revels,~and each had its associates' coat
of arms over its own gateway. Of their internal affairs the public
knew but little, for guests were seldom admitted behind the scenes.

The Inner Temple was governed in accordance with some very
remarkable rules. One of these rules, handed down from the
time of the founders, the old Knights Templar, enjoined silence
at meals. Members dining in the hall were expected to make
their wants known by signs, or, if that were not practicable, in
low tones or whispers only.

Another rule provided that members should seat themselves
in the dining-hall in messes of four, the tables being of the exact
length required to accommodate three messes each. This arrange-
ment prevails to the present day.

Shakespeare — i.e., the author of the plays — was familiar with
these petty details. He laid one of the scenes of i King Henry VI.
(ii. 4) in the Temple garden itself, where we have, properly
enough, a legal discussion on the rights of certain claimants to
the throne. In the course of this discussion the following
colloquy takes place :

Plantagenei. Great lords and gentlemen, what means this silence ?
Dare no man answer in a case of truth ?

Suffolk. Within the Temple-hall we were too loud ;
The garden here is more convenient.

*****
Plan. Thanks, gentle sir.

Come, let us four to dinner.

Mr. E. J. Castle, ' a member of the Queen''s Council and a life-
long resident in the Temple,' comments on the foregoing passage
thus :

' This reference to the Temple Gardens, not saying whether the
Inner or Middle Temple is meant, curiously enough points to
the writer being a member of Gray's Inn ; ... an Inner or a
Middle Temple man would Have given his inn its proper title.' —
Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson, and Greene ; a Study, 65, n.

Gray's Inn Garden had not been laid out when the play of
King Henry VI. was written.

APPENDIX 1 On

The above is Number IX. of Mr. Reed's twenty Coincidences,
and is fairly typical of all.

On the other hand, those who take this matter seriously enough
to lift the cudgels in defence of Shakespeare have collected a
goodly number of arguments, some of which we will set before our
readers.

*
I. Arguments in Favour of Shakespeare.

1. Shakespeare had a grammar-school education to begin with.
The school at Stratford-on-Avon was acknowledged to be one of
the best existing in his day.

2. It is fairly certain that he also had some legal training.

3. The details which we do possess of his life in London
are very remarkable. His rapid rise to the position of actor-
manager is in itself a proof of no ordinary ability. This Lord
Penzance acknowledges when he says : ' A man does not get
himself accepted as the guiding hand of a commercial enterprise
like that of a theatre without some special fitness for it.'

4. Shakespeare's contemporaries were jealous of him. If he
was so great an impostor as is now alleged, why djd not one of
them — we will not say all — show him up ? Ben Jonson, for
instance.

5. During that period of Shakespeare's life which is known as
4 the interval,' it cannot be said with certainty that he was not
educating himself. We are only asked if it is likely that he was.

6. There is no question as to his having written some portions
of the plays.

7. It has been, for nearly 300 years, a ' fixed and venerable
belief ' that he was the author of the plays.

8. The plays must have been written by one who had an
intimate knowledge of acting in all its intricacies — ' who had
walked the stage himself.'

9. It is a common thing for authors to destroy their MS. and
proof-sheets as soon as their works are printed or published.
This, apparently, was Shakespeare's custom.

10. Shakespeare simply heads the list of a long line of great
literary men who rose above their circumstances and surround-
ings.

u. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt says : ' In the collective edition of
the plays men who had been personally intimate with the poet,

39—2

612 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

who had acted in these compositions when they were brought on
the stage, who enjoyed the opportunity far better than we do of
hearing reports and rumours about the pieces and their origin,
who might even have beheld their friend with his pen in his hand,
with the unfinished manuscript before him, attested his exclusive
claim within their information to the work.'

12. It is well known that Shakespeare was even ostentatiously
indifferent to his own fame.

II. Arguments against Bacon.

1. The onus of proof rests with those who make the claim in
Bacon's behalf. As yet no positive proof is forthcoming. All
arguments hitherto adduced are mere matters of conjecture.

2. It is early yet to state, as some Baconians do quite vehe-
mently, that Bacon must have written the plays. Dr. Dowden,
in an able article contributed to the National Review, in defence
of Shakespeare, makes this very plain.

3. Except by a few enthusiasts on the Baconian side, such as
Mrs. Gallup and Ignatius Donelly, the evidence based on the
alleged discovery of the biliteral cipher is accounted a failure.

4. If the plays were written by Bacon, why was not the fact
disclosed by some of his contemporaries ?

5. Granting that writing for the stage was considered dis-
reputable, what about the sonnets ? Were they accounted dis-
reputable ? Yet it is acknowledged that the same man wrote
the plays and the sonnets.

6. Admitting that Ben Jonson omitted Shakespeare from his
list of great contemporaries, is it likely that he had no theory as
to the authorship of the plays ? Had he any reason for being
anxious to keep Bacon's secret ?

7. We know so much about Bacon that it seems strange, to
say the least of it, that he could have written the plays without
the facts being discovered sooner ?

8. Bacon himself would have been thoroughly aware of the
perennial greatness of the plays themselves, and ' would have
been the last man in the world not to acknowledge the authorship
of pieces which he would almost necessarily have known to be
classics for all time.'

9. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt says : ' Not only in Shakespeare's

APPENDIX I 613

lifetime were the plays and poems equally published as his, but
when he was no more, and while Bacon yet survived, they simi-
larly continued to be so, and the First Folio almost ostentatiously
sets forth the authorship of Shakespeare, as the Lear of 1608 and
the Sonnets of 1609 had previously done.'

10. The same writer says : ' All these appropriations were
made, not by Shakespeare, but by the booksellers under
the influence of common knowledge.' It is inconceivable
that this could have been the case had Bacon been the author of
the plays.

11. Bacon was unquestionably a great genius, and possessed
of marvellous versatility, but such versatility as is claimed for
him by those who credit him with the authorship of the plays
would seem to be outside the range of human possibility when
coupled with that displayed in his acknowledged works.

12. The keenest of critics, apart from prejudice, and with a
thorough knowledge of Bacon and his class of mind, are uncon-
vinced by the arguments which to the ordinary student may
easily appear to be overwhelming.

Apart from the ultimate issue of this discussion, which, though
long past its infancy, has not yet reached the stage of adolescence,
the advantage to the student of studying both sides of the ques-
tion is obvious. ' A father dying,' quotes Mr. Reed, ' called
his sons to his bedside and told them he had buried a
treasure in his vineyard for them. In due time they found
it, not in gold or silver, but in the beautiful crops that reward
the spade and pick.'

A new anthology has recently appeared, entitled The Praise
of Shakespeare, which lovers of the ' Poet's King ' will hail with
gratitude. It is compiled by Mr. C. E. Hughes, with a preface
by Mr. Sidney Lee. ' Two purposes,' says a modern critic,
' are served by this volume. In the first place the Baconian
enthusiast, who smiles condescendingly on what Mr. A. P.
Sinnett calls " one of the most ludicrous hallucinations that
have ever been widely spread throughout the civilized world,"
is provided with ample evidence of Shakespeare's contemporary
fame ; and, in the second place, for the first time in English
literature a volume is presented to the public which contains
all the fine and brilliant things uttered in Shakespeare's praise

614 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

from the very period of his existence down to these less convincing
days of scepticism and cryptograms.'

The idea of this work originated in the mind of Mr. Lee, who
tells us in the preface that he had observed how the supporters
of the Baconian claims ' persist in affirming that Shakespeare was
unnoticed by his contemporaries, and that his achievements
failed to win reputation in his lifetime or in the generations
succeeding his death.' It therefore occurred to him that an
excellent and permanent answer to these wild and groundless
charges might be found in such a work as Mr. Hughes has now
produced. The anthology must surely give the Baconian
pause if he carefully studies it. In collecting all the most
eulogistic references which have been made to Shakespeare by
literary critics down to Matthew Arnold and other recent writers,
special attention has been paid to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and many who are not wedded to either side of this
pretty quarrel will feel that the evidence brought forward must
make it harder for the Baconian to persist in believing that
'the Stratford butcher boy' became 'a third-rate London,
actor,' and remained to the end of his days an ignoramus ' who
could not twice spell his own name correctly.' Amongst the
strongest points adduced in proof of the high esteem in which
the Bard of Avon was held by his contemporaries is a reference
to the terms of the preface to the First Folio. Nor are those
people allowed to escape who say that what reputation Shake-
speare enjoyed among his contemporaries was due only to his
skill in acting :

' The preface of the First Folio (1623) is enough to prove that
this was not the case (says Mr. Hughes). The tone of the
address " to the great variety of readers " is not that of pub-
lishers trying to awaken interest in a forgotten personage by
calling attention to works that used to be popular. The language
is that of affectionate friends, the references to Shakespeare
those of intimate associates whose memories have not healed
of the wound inflicted by his death. It was addressed to the
public, not with diffidence that is born of anxiety, lest the
subject of eulogy should meet with an indifferent welcome, but
with the confidence that is inspired by friendship with a great
man who is recognised as a great man.'

In this First Folio edition appeared the sonnet by Hugh

APPENDIX 1 615

Holland, which shows plainly enough that Shakespeare had
won ample recognition even in his own days. The sonnet is
inscribed. Upon the Lines and Life of the Famous Scenick Poet,
Master William Shakespeare :

Those hands, which you so clapp'd, go now, and wring,
You Britains brave ; for done are Shakespeare's days :
His days are done, that made the dainty Plays,

Which make the Globe of heav'n and earth to ring.

Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian Spring,
Turn'd all to tears, and Phoebus clouds his rays :
That corpse, that coffin, now bestick those bayes,

Which crown'd him Poet first, then Poet's King.

If Tragedies'might any Prologue have ;
All those he made, would scarce make one to this :

Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave
(Death's public tiring-house), the Nuncius is.

For though his line of life went soon about,

The life yet of his lines shall never out.

Perhaps the most recent serious criticism of Shakespeare's
work and ' qualifications ' is that of Mr. Churton Collins, who,
in his Studies in Shakespeare, throws much light upon the vexed
question of the poet's classical education. In doing so he
modestly disclaims any attempt to assume an original stand-
point. He admits that Russell Lowell long ago suggested that
Shakespeare possibly had access to the Greek dramas in Latin
translations, and that other eminent and capable critics have
maintained that in all probability he was a fair Latin scholar.
Mr. Churton Collins scouts the idea that because the poet was
not a University man he must needs have known but ' little
Latin and less Greek. '> While admitting that we have no proof
of Shakespeare having been educated at the grammar-school of
Stratford-on-Avon, he contends that one of his class would be
certain to be sent there. At the period at which he would
enter the school it stood high amongst its fellows. Its head-
master then was Walter Roche, an ex-Fellow of Corpus, Oxon.,
a college pre-eminent in point of scholarship. The curriculum
of the school, Mr. Collins tells us, included Cordelius's Colloquia
and other classical works. ' He (Shakespeare) would be
thoroughly drilled in Lily's Latin Grammar, prescribed by
Royal proclamation in each reign for use in every grammar-
school, and in construing and parsing the sentences learnt.
Of his familiarity with this part of a classical education he gives us
an amusing illustration in Love's Labour's Lost (Act IV., Scene 2,
and Act V., Scene i).' Mr. Collins insists that Shakespeare must

616 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

have read the Latin Classics from which he borrows in the
original, for the simple reason that there were no translations of
them in existence at the time, maintaining that it is difficult to
believe, for instance, that the poet had not read Lucretius, of
whose works there was no translation until long after the
Elizabethan age. Mr. Collins calls the Baconian theory a
' mania ' and ' a monstrous tax on our credulity.'

APPENDIX II
THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF SHAKESPEARE'S NAME

THERE are but five extant specimens of Shakespeare's hand-
writing. These consist of autograph signatures to the following
documents :

1. The purchase-deed of a house in Blackfriars. It is on
parchment, and is dated the loth of March, 1613. It is now in
the library "of the Guildhall, London.

2. A mortgage-deed relating to the same house, dated
the nth of March, 1613, the day following the purchase. This
is now in the British Museum.

3. The poet's will, which was finally executed in March, 1616,
about a month after his death. It consists of three sheets of
paper, at the foot of each of which Shakespeare signed his
name. It is now at Somerset House, London.

No other specimen of Shakespeare's writing has hitherto been
discovered, but this appears less wonderful when we consider
the fact that specimens of the handwriting of almost all the
great authors who were his contemporaries are extremely rare.
Edmund Spenser is another case in point.

The extant signatures differ slightly in the form of spelling.
They are written in the old English style, and are somewhat
puzzling to the unskilled reader. Scholars, however, attach
but little importance to the discrepancies, which are strongly
characteristic of the age. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries even authors of distinction did not always sign their

APPENDIX II 617

names in the same way. Sir Walter Raleigh was a notable
example of this inconsistency. It cannot, therefore, be called
important, but it is unquestionably interesting to consider the
various forms in which the name of the greatest of all poets and
dramatists has been handed down to us.

The signature in the purchase-deed is generally supposed to
be ' William Shakspere,' though in all other parts of the docu-
ment it is ' William Shakespeare.'

In the mortgage-deed the signature is supposed by some critics
to be ' Shakspere,' while others read it ' Shakspeare.'

In the will the first signature is now so faded that it can
scarcely be deciphered. Mr. George Steevens, however, made
a facsimile of it in 1776, from which it appears that the writing
was ' Shakspere.' The other two signatures have been variously
interpreted as ' Shakspere,' ' Shakspeare,' and ' Shakespeare.'

Mr. Sidney Lee, whose valuable note on this subject should
be closely studied, points out that ' Shakespeare ' is the form
adopted in the text of all the legal documents relating to the
poet's property, and ' alone has the sanction of legal and literary
usage.' Yet, in spite of all this, each of the above forms has
obtained the sanction of a large number of Shakespearian
scholars of every period.

The visitor to Stratford must guard against placing too much
importance on the spelling in the registers, as these were written
by the various officials, a fact which easily accounts for the
discrepancies which are to be found there in entries relating to
the poet and other members of his family.

In Contributions to a Catalogue of the Lennox Library there
are exhaustive and valuable notes on this subject. In the
course of these the author says :

' Not pausing to examine all the four thousand ways of spelling
the name according to English orthography which Mr. George
Wise (in The Autograph of William Shakespeare, Philadelphia,
1889) exhibits, nor the " thirty-seven different authentic ways
of spelling it," which, he tells us, have been counted in tracing
the name back through the records of the family, nor the twenty-
six modes offered by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, we shall confine
our attention to the four forms (omitting a few now obsolete)
which appear in connection with the author's works, or with
comments upon them by others.'

6i8 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

I. Shakespear.

For this form there are forty-two authorities, including Burns,
Dryden, Hazlitt, Ben Jonson, and Sir William Temple. This
form may be dismissed as obsolete, and not likely to be revived.

II. Shakspere.

Sir Frederick Madden contends that this is the way in which
the poet spelled his name in each of the five autographs. This
he states in opposition to Chalmers and Drake, who insist
that all the signatures are dissimilar. He also states that
the name is written thus in the Stratford registers, both at
baptism and burial, as well as the names of other members of
the family between 1558 and 1593. Sir Frederick is right as
regards the birth entry, but wrong as regards the burial, which
is entered as that of ' Shakspear ' or ' Shakspeare,' the doubt
being as to whether the ' r ' is followed by an ' e ' or a mere
flourish.

Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, who founded the new ' Shakspere
Society,' supports this spelling. He humorously says : ' Though
it has hitherto been too much to ask people to suppose
that Shakespeare knew how to spell his own name, I hope the
demand may not prove too great for the imagination of the
members of the new society.'

///. Shakspeare.

For this spelling there are in authorities cited, amongst
them Byron, Thomas Campbell, S. T. Coleridge, De Quincy,
Dibdin, Hallam, Macaulay, Isaac Reed, and Wordsworth.

IV. Shakespeare.

This is undoubtedly the most popular form, 282 authorities
being cited in support of it. Amongst these are Addison,
Collier, Denham, Dryden, Halliwell-Phillips, Heminge and
Condell, Lord Jeffrey, Dr. Johnson, Prof. Dowden, Sir Walter
Scott, Swinburne, Skeat, Walpole, and Wordsworth. The New
York Shakespeare Society may also be mentioned in its support.

The student will notice that authors are not always consistent
in this matter, and that some names appear in more than one

APPENDIX III 619

of the above lists. ' It is a reproach to English people that
they cannot agree about the spelling of the name of their greatest
author. Let the minorities yield to the large majority, and
hereafter all unite in Shakespeare.' This is the name as spelled
on the title-page of the First Folio, in the dedication of Venus
and Adonis to Lord Southampton, and on most of the Quartos
published during the poet's lifetime. It is written so on the
portrait which is the original of Droeshout's famous engraving—
the only portrait with any contemporary evidence of being a
likeness — and it is so written upon the poet's tomb.

APPENDIX III

POETS' CORNER

THE name Poets' Corner, as applied to the south transept in
Westminster Abbey, is first mentioned by Goldsmith. We
are told that the attraction to the spot as a burial-place for the
poets arose from its containing the tomb of Chaucer, the Father
of English Poetry. The tomb itself, though it was not erected
until more than 150 years after the death of the poet, is the only
ancient one in the transept.

' Those who look upon the tombs of the poets,' says Mr. Hare
in a little guide-book which is full of interesting details and
comments, ' can scarcely fail to observe, with surprise, how very
few are commemorated here whose works are now read, how
many whose very existence is generally forgotten.' In fact, as
Addison wrote, ' there are many poets who have no monument,
and many monuments which have no poets.' The visitor will
look in vain for any monument to the memory of Sir Philip
Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Sir John Suckling, Francis Quarles,
Robert Herrick, Thomas Chatterton, Allan Ramsay, George
Crabbe, Felicia Hemans, Keats, Scott, Shelley, or Walter Savage
Landor. William Cowper and George Herbert are commemo-
rated, it is said, by stained windows.

The following is a list of the poets commemorated in Poets'

620 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

Corner, beginning on the right from the door at the south end
of the transept :

Michael Drayton, author of the Polyolbion. He died in 1631.
His bust was erected here by Anne Clifford.

John Philips, author of The Splendid Shilling. The monu-
ment was erected by his friend, Sir Simon Harcourt, 1708.

Geoffrey Chaucer. A gray marble altar-tomb, with a canopy,
erected by Nicholas Brigham, an admirer of the poet, in the reign
of Edward VI. Chaucer died in 1400. The window above the
tomb was erected to his memory in 1868.

Robert Browning was buried near Chaucer's tomb in 1889,
and Lord Tennyson close by in 1892.

Abraham Cowley, 1667. The monument is over the grave
of the poet, and was erected by George Villiers, second Duke of
Buckingham.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is commemorated by a bust
placed in the transept in 1884.

John Dryden, 1700. A monument erected by Sheffield, Duke
of Buckingham, with a bust by Scheemakers, given by the poet's
widow in 1730.

Near Dryden's monument lies Francis Beaumont, 1616.

Returning to the south door, and taking course to the left, the
first monument is that of Ben Jonson. It is an allegorical sculp-
ture by Rysbrach, and was erected in 1737.

Edmund Spenser, 1599. Buried here \ at the expense of
Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Samuel Butler, 1680. Buried at St. Paul's, Covent Garden.
Bust erected by John Barber, Lord Mayor of London.

John Milton, 1674. Buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate.

Thomas Gray, 1771. Buried at Stoke Pogis. Monument by
John Bacon.

William Mason, 1797. Buried at Aston, in Yorkshire. Monu-
ment by the elder Bacon.

APPENDIX III 621

Thomas Shadwell, 1692. Buried at Chelsea. Monument by
the elder Bacon.

Matthew Prior, 1721. Bust by Coysevox, a present from
Louis XIV.

Christopher Anstey, 1805, author of the New Bath Guide.

Thomas Campbell, -1844. Beneath his statue, by Marshall,
are to be seen some lines from his Last Man.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1834. Buried at Highgate. Bust
by Thorneycroft, given by an American admirer in 1885.

Robert-Southey, Poet-Laureate, 1843, buried at Crosthwaite,
A bust by Weekes.

William Shakespeare, 1616. The monument, by Kent and
Scheemakers, was erected by public subscription in 1740. A
statue holding a scroll, on which are inscribed some lines from
The Tempest.

James Thomson, 1748, buried at Richmond. The monument
was designed by Robert Adam, and consists of a figure leaning on
a pedestal, which bears in relief the Seasons. It was sculptured
by Kent.

Robert Burns, 1796. Bust by Steel. Cost defrayed by
subscriptions in Scotland.

Nicholas Rowe, 1718. Poet-Laureate of George I. Epitaph
by Pope. Monument by Rysbrack.

John Gay, 1732. Monument by Rysbrack, erected by the
Duke and Duchess of Queensberry.

Oliver Goldsmith, 1774, buried at the Temple. The medallion
is by Nollekens.

LITTLE POETS' CORNER

At the south-west corner of the Abbey, behind Cornewall's
tomb, is the Baptistery, which Dean Stanley used to call ' Little
Poets' Corner.' It contains a statue of Wordsworth, who was
buried at Grasmere, a monument to John Keble (who was
buried at Hursley), with a bust by Woolner, a bust of Matthew
Arnold by Bruce Joy, and a bust of Charles Kingsley by Woolner.
Arnold was buried at Laleham, and Kingsley at Eversley.

622 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

APPENDIX IV

THE SONNET

A SONNET is a form of verse which stands apart from all other
kinds of peotical compositions. Its English name is derived
from the Italian sonetto, a diminutive of suono.

This form of verse may be defined as a poem in a stanza
mostly iambic in movement, properly decasyllabic or hendeca-
syllabic in metre, always in fourteen lines — originally composed
of an octet and a sestet — properly expressing two successive
phases of one thought.

The date and place of its origin cannot be stated with absolute
certainty, but the best authorities are now agreed that it was
born in Provence and nurtured in Italy. By many, however,
it is spoken of as ' of Italian origin.' The first writer to put this
kind of poetical composition into the form which has since gener-
ally obtained was Era Guettone d' Arezzo, who flourished in
the year 1250 and died in 1295. It is to Petrarch, however,
that the sonnet owes its ultimate perfection. He it was who,
by embellishing it with all the graces of which it was capable,
and which his wonderful genius abundantly supplied, brought it
so greatly into fashion that from his time to this day it has been,
among the Italians, and for a long space of time among all the
other nations who imitate them, the prevailing mode of lyric
poetry.

The sonnet, then, though it has often varied according to the
fancy of different writers, may be generally thus described :

It is a short regular ode of fourteen decasyllabic lines, con-
sisting, as the Italians phrase them, of two quadernarii inter-
rhymed, followed by two ternarii or terzetti, inter-rhymed also,
though the arrangement of the rhymes (in the terzetti) be not
always the same. The last terzetto concludes with what is
termed the chiusa, or close, which, for the most part, and especi-
ally in Petrarch, contains in it the principal thought on which

APPENDIX IV 623

the sonnet is built, or at least some conspicuous sentence or
striking allusion.

These are the lines laid down by Lord Charlemont, the trans-
lator of the sonnets of Petrarch (Dublin, 1822).

The Italian form of sonnet has always been looked upon by
experts as the only genuine or pure form. In addition to the
rules stated above, it must be remembered that while the form
of the octet in a pure sonnet is invariable, that of the sestet is
absolutely free, save that the emotions should govern the arrange-
ment of the verses. The octet consists of two rhymes only,
which must be arranged a, b, b, a ; a, b, b, a ; while the sestet
may consist of either two or three rhymes, with a choice as to
their disposition in the verse.

Of the various forms of what we must term miscellaneous
sonnets, the most usual, and perhaps the best, is that which was
invented by the Earl of Surrey, and almost universally adopted
by Shakespeare, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet,
the quatrains rhyming alternately.

Spenser's sonnet also consists of three quatrains rhyming
alternately and ending with a couplet. It differs from Shake-
speare's in this respect, that the first line of each succeeding
quatrain rhymes with the last line of the preceding one.

With some exceptions the sonnets of Milton are of the pure
Italian or Petrarchan type. In some instances, however, he
misses the aim of the Petrarchan scheme by blending the octet
with the sestet.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnets are, as a rule, pure
Petrarchan. She rhymes all her sestets in the same way—
a, b ; a, b ; a, b.

A large number of Wordsworth's sonnets are pure Petrarchan,
but some of his quatrains rhyme alternately.

624 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

APPENDIX V
POETS-LAUREATE

The title of ' Poet-Laureate ' was not used in England until
the fourteenth century. It was then used in two senses, differing
not merely from each other, but from the sense in which it is
applied at the present day. In one sense it was used to denote
a particular degree at the University, whereas, on the other
hand, any poet of very superior merit might be called a Poet-
Laureate by his own admirers. Edmund Spenser was the' first
to whom the title was given in the sense in which it has been
used ever since. The following is a list of those who have been
thus distinguished :

Edmund Spenser . . . . . . . . 1591-1599

Samuel Daniel . . . . . . . . 1599-1619

Ben Jonson (Interregnum) . . . . 1619-1637

Sir William Davenant . . . . . . 1660-1668

John Dry den . . . . . . . . 1670-1689

Thomas Shadwell . . . . . . . . 1689-1692

Nahum Tate . . . . . . . . 1692-1715

Nicholas Rowe . . . . . . . . 1715-1718

Laurence Eusden, Clerk . . . . . . 1718-1730

Colley Gibber . . . . . . . . 1730-1757

William Whitehead . . . . . . . . 1757-1785

Thomas Warton, Clerk . . . . . . 1785-1790

Henry James Pye . . . . . . . . 1790-1813

Robert Southey . . . . . . . . 1813-1843

William Wordsworth . . . . . . 1843-1850

Alfred, Lord Tennyson . . . . . . 1850-1892

Alfred Austin . . . . . . . . 1896

When Ben Jonson was appointed the salary attached to the
office was 100 marks. In response to a petition which that
poet addressed to the King, it was raised to £100 per annum, to
which was added an annual gift of a tierce of Jonson's favourite
wine — Canary. This in turn was commuted during the laureate-

APPENDIX V 625

ship of Pyc for £27 a year, though it had been discontinued for
awhile during the reign of James II. A rule was established
in the time of the Georges by which the Poet-Laureate was
expected to present an ode to the King every year on his birthday.

Isaac Disraeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, gives the following
sketch of the history of ' Poets Laureat,' from a memoir of
the French Academy, by the Abbe Resnel :

' The custom of crowning poets is as ancient as poetry itself ;
it has, indeed, frequently varied ; it existed, however, as late as
the reign of Theodosius, when it was abolished as a remain of
paganism. When the barbarians overspread Europe few
appeared to merit this honour, and fewer who could have read
their works. It was about the time of Petrarch that poetry
resumed its ancient lustre ; he was publicly honoured with the
laurel crown. It was in this century (the thirteenth) that the
establishment of Bachelor and Doctor was fixed in the Univer-
sities. Those who were found worthy of the honour obtained
the laurel of Bachelor, or the laurel of Doctor — Laurea B.icca-
laureatus, Laurea Doctoratus. At their reception they not only
assumed the title, but they also had a crown of laurel placed on
their heads. To this ceremony the ingenious writer attributes
the revival of the custom: The poets were not slow in putting
in their claims to what they had most a right, and their pitrons
sought to encourage them by these honourable distinctions. . . .
In Italy these honours did not long flourish, although Tassa
dignified the laurel crown by his acceptance of it. Many got
crowned who were unworthy of the distinction. The laurel
was even bestowed on Querno, whose character is given in The
Dunciad :

Not with more glee, by hands pontific crown'd,
With scarlet hats wide-waving circled round,
Rome in her capitol saw Querno sit,
Thron'd on seven hills, the Antichrist of wit.

CANTO II.

' This man was made Laureat for the joke's sake ; his poetry
was inspired by his cups, a kind of poet who came in with the
dessert, and he recited twenty thousand verses. He was rather
the arch-buffoon than the arch-poet of Leo X., though honoured
with the latter title. They invented for him a new kind of
laureated honour, and in the intermixture of the foliage raised
to Apollo slyly inserted the vine and the cabbage-leaves, which

40

626 A HISTORY OF BRITISH POETRY

he clearly deserved, from his extreme dexterity in clearing
the pontiff's dishes and emptying his goblets. ... In Germany
the laureat honours flourished under the reign of Maximilian I.
He founded, in 1504, a Poetical College at Vienna, reserving
to himself and the regent the power of bestowing the laurel.
But the institution, notwithstanding this well-concerted scheme,
fell into disrepute. . . . The Emperor of Germany retains the
laureatship in all its splendour. The selected bard is called II
Poeta Cesareo. . . . The French never had a Poet Laureat,
though they had Royal Poets, for none were ever solemnly
crowned. The Spanish nation, always desirous of titles and
honours, seem to have known that of the Laureat ; but little
information concerning it can be gathered from their authors.
Respecting our own country little can be added to the informa-
tion of Selden. John Kay, who dedicated a History of Rhodes
to Edward IV., takes the title of his humble Poet Laureat.
Gower and Chaucer were Laureats, so likewise was Skelton to
Henry VIII. In the Acts of Rymer there is a charter of
Henry VII. with the title of pro Poeta Laureate — that is, perhaps,
only a Poet laureated at the University in the King's household.
Our poets were never solemnly crowned as in other countries.
Selden, after all his recondite researches, is satisfied with saying
that some trace of this distinction is to be found in our nation.
Our kings from time immemorial have placed a miserable depen-
dent in their household appointment who was sometimes called
the King's Poet and the King's Versificator. It is probable
that at length the selected bard assumed the title of Poet Laureat
without receiving the honours of the ceremony ; or, at the most,
the crown of laurel was a mere obscure custom practised at
our Universities, and not attended with great public distinction.
It was often placed on the skull of a pedant than wreathed on
the head of a man of genius. Shadwell united the offices of Poet
Laureat and Historiographer, and by a manuscript account
of his public revenue it appears that for two years' salary he
received £600. At his death Rymer became the Historio-
grapher and Tate the Laureat ; both offices seem equally useless,
but, if united, will not prove so to the Poet Laureat.'

INDEX

ADDISON, Joseph, 212
Akenside, Dr. Mark, 31, 364
Alcuin, 8, 66
Aldhelm, 8, 65
Alexander, Mrs., 601
Alford, Very Rev. Henry, 584
Alfred the Great, 66
Allingham, William, 599
Alliteration, 5

Ancrum, Earl of, 248

Annalists, i

Anstey, Christopher, 369, 621

Armstrong, John, 367

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 513

Arnold, Matthew, 582, 621

Athelstan, 9

Atherstone, Edwin, 569

Ayton, Sir Robert, 247

Aytoun, W. E., 591

B

Bailey, Philip James, 580

Baillie, Lady Grisell, 376

Baillie, Joanna, 592

Ballad poetry, 20

Banim, John, 596

Barbauld, Anna Letitia, 307

Barbour, John, 68

Barclay, Alexander, 19, 131
Barham, Rev. Richard, 584
Barnard, Lady Anne, 377
Barnes, Rev. William, 585
Barnfield, Richard, 140
Barton, Bernard, 577
Bayly, Thomas Haynes, 574
Beattie, Dr. James, 31, 379
Beaumont, Francis, 157, 620
Beaumont, Sir John, 232
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 583
Bede, Venerable, 2, 8, 65
Beowulf, Lay of, 7, 43

Bishop, Rev. Samuel, 368
Blacklock, Dr. Thomas, 379
Blackmore, Sir Richard, 238
Blackstone, Sir William, 367
Blackwell, John, 603
Blair, Rev. Robert, 31, 312
Blake, William, 371
Blamire, Susanna, 370
Bloomfield, Robert, 370
Boleyn, George. See Viscount
Rochefort

Boniface, 8

Boswell, Sir Alexander, 378
Bowles, Rev. William L., 569
Boyle, Roger. See Earl of Orrery

Bradford, John, 386

Brady, Dr. Nicholas, 252 -\

Bramston, Rev. James, 359

Breton, Nicholas, 139

Bronte, Emily, 586 *jj

Brooke, Arthur, 1 36

Brooke, Henry, 382

Brooke, Lord, 141

Broome, Rev. William, 359

Browne, Isaac Hawkins, 361

Browne, William, 229

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 484

Browning, Robert, 33, 493. 62°

Bruce, Michael, 379

Bryan, Sir Francis, 146

Buchanan, George, 148

Buckhurst, Lord, 136

Buckinghamshire, Duke of, 235

Bulwer, Edward. See Lord Lytton

Burns, Robert, 32, 321, 621

Butler, Samuel, 195, 620

Byrom, John, 364

Byron, Lord, 37, 424

Csedmon, 7, 44
Callanan, James Joseph, 590
Calverley, Charles Stuart, 586
627 40 — 2

628

INDEX

Campbell, Thomas, 39, 534, 621
Canning, George, 572
Canute, 9, 67

Carew, Lady Elizabeth, 236
Carew, Thomas, 27, 239
Carey, Henry, 360
Carrington, Noel Thomas, 574
Carter, Mrs. Elizabeth, 371
Cartwright, Rev. William, 237
Cary, Rev. Henry Francis, 574
Cawthorne, James, 374
Chalkhill, John, 29, 245
Chamberlayne, William, 232
Chapman, George, 145
Chatterton, Thomas, 31, 267
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 12, 69, 620
Chettle, Henry, 144
Churchill, Charles, 365
Churchyard, Thomas, 138
Gibber, Colley, 361, 624
Clanvowe, Sir Thomas, 92
Clare, John, 577
Cleland, William, 249
Cleveland, John, 244
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 584
Coleridge, Hartley, 575
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 34, 405,

621

Collins, John, 587
Collins, William, 31, 263
Colman, George, the younger, 374
Columban, 8
Congreve, William, 223
Constable, Henry, 139
Cook, Eliza, 581
Cooper, Thomas, 581
Corbet, Bishop Richard, 239
Cornwall, Barry. See Proctor,

Bryan W.

Cotton, Charles, 232
Cotton, Nathaniel, 373
Cowley, Abraham, 28, 175, 620
Cowper, William, 31, 290
Crabbe, Rev. George, 32, 302
Crashaw, Richard, 29, 244
Crawford, Robert, 376
Croly, Rev. George, 598
Crowe, Rev. William, 370
Cunningham, Allan, 588
Cunningham, John, 382
Cunningham, Thomas M., 592
Cuthbert, 8
Cynewulf, 9, 47

D

Daniel, Samuel, 134, 624
Darley, George, 600
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 373
Davenant, Sir William, 243, 624

Davie, Adam, 68

Davies, Sir John, 135

Davis, Francis, 600

Davies, Robert, 385

Davis, Thomas Osborne, 596

Davison, Francis, 146

Dekker, Thomas, 229

Denham, Sir John, 27, 224

Dennis, John, 254

Dermody, Thomas, 384

Dibdin, Charles, 587

Dibdin, Thomas, 587

Dickens, Charles, 585

Dillon, Wentworth. See Earl of

Roscommon
Dobell, Sydney, 581
Dodsley, Robert, 374
Donne, Dr. John, 28, 230
Dorset, Earl of, 234
Douglas, Gavin, 93
Doyle, Sir Francis, 587
Dray ton, Michael, 134, 620
Drennan, William, 383
Drummond, William, 248
Dryden, John, 31, 201, 620, 624
Dufferin, Lady, 597
Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, 602
Duke, Rev. Richard, 247
Dunbar, William, 93
Dyer, Sir Edward, 138
Dyer, Rev. John, 385

E

Edwards, Richard, 145
Elizabeth, Queen, 132
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 376
Elliot, Miss Jane, 377
Elliott, Ebenezer, 573
Ellesmere, Earl of, 575
Ercildoun, Thomas of, 5 1
Erskine, Francis. See Earl of

Rosslyn

Eusden, Laurence, 624
Evans, Evan, 385

Faber, Rev. F. W., 583
Fairfax, Edward, 235
Falconer, William, 380
Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 236
Fawkes, Rev. Francis, 367
Fenton, Elijah, 359
Ferguson, Robert, 375
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 597
Fletcher, John, 157
Fletcher, Phineas and Giles, 20. 229
Ford, John, 228
Fordun, John de, 68

INDEX

629

Francis, Rev. Dr. Philip, 384
Frere, John Hookham, 570
Fridegode, 8

Gall, Richard, 378

Garrick, David, 373

Garth, Sir Samuel, 237, 254

Gascoigne, George, 137

Gay, John, 286, 621

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 48

Geoffrey de Vinsauf, 67

Gifford, Rev. Richard, 364

Gifford, William, 369

Gilfillan, Robert, 592

Gleemen, Anglo-Saxon, '5

Gloucester, Robert of, 52

Glover, Richard, 366

Goldsmith, Oliver, 346, 621

Gower, John, 14, 62

Graham, James. See Marquis of

Montrose

Grahame, Rev. James, 381
Grainger, Dr. James, 367
Grant," Mrs. Anne, 380
Granville, George. See Lord Lans-

downe

Gray, Thomas, 31, 270, 620
Green, Matthew, 360
Greene, Robert, 144
Greenwell, Dora, 587
Greville, Fulke. See Lord Brooke
Griffin, Gerald, 597
Grimoald, Nicholas, 136
Guildford, Nicholas de, 68

H

Habington, William, -29, 239

Halifax, Earl of, 236

Hamilton, William, 376

Hammond, James, 370

Harrington, Sir John, 137

Harrington, John, 136

Harry, Blind, 92

Hawes, Stephen, 18, 131

Hawker, Rev. Robert S., 584

Hayley, William, 373

Heber, Bishop Reginald, 39, 565

Hemans, Mrs., 39, 455

Henryson, Robert, 92

Herbert, Rev. George, 29, 163

Herbert, Very Rev. William, 564

Herrick, Rev. Robert, 27, 173

Hervey, Thomas Kibble, 579

Heywood, John, 19, 142

Hislop, James, 593

Hogg, James(Ettrick Shepherd), 523

Home, John, 380

Hood, Thomas, 464

Home, Richard Hengist, 582
Houghton, Lord, 580
Hovell, Edward. See Lord Thurlow
Howard, Henry. See Earl of

Surrey

Hughes, Hugh, 386
Hume, Alexander, 148
Hunnis, William, 138
Hunt, J. H. Leigh, 566
Hunter, Mrs. Anne, 373

Ingelow, Jean, 586

Ingoldsby, Thomas. See Rev. R.

Barham
Iscanus, Josephus, 66

Jago, Rev. Richard, 369
James I. of England, 26
James I. of Scotland, 88
Jenyns, Soame, 375
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 278
Jones, Peter, 603
Jones, Thomas, 252
Jones, Sir William, 372
Jones, William Ellis, 603
Jonson, Ben, 38, 149, 620, 624
Joseph of Exeter (Iscanus), 66
Joyce, Dr. Robert Dwyer, 600

K

Keats, John, 39, 449
Keble, Rev. John, 458, 621
Keegan, John, 599
Kelly, Hugh, 383
Ken, Bishop Thomas, 235
Kildare, Michael of, 3, 68
King, Bishop Henry, 236
Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 583, 621
Knight, Henry Gaily, 576
Knowles, Herbert, 587
Knowles, J. Sheridan, 40, 597
Knox, William, 592
Kyd, Thomas, 143

Laidlaw, William, 592

Lake School, 34, 39

Lamb, Charles, 564

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, 573

Land or, Walter Savage, 421

Langhorne, Rev. Dr. John, 368

Langland, William, 58

Langton, Stephen, 67

Lansdowne, Lord, 238

Layamon, 49

Lee, Nathaniel, 241

630

INDEX

Leonine verse, 1 1
Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 571
Leyden, John, 381
Lillo, George, 374
Lloyd, Robert, 365
Llwyd, Richard, 386
Lodge, Thomas, 140
Logan, John, 379
Lovelace, Richard, 27, 243
Lover, Samuel, 599
Lowe, John, 377
Luttrell, Henry, 571
Lydgate, John, 18, 87
Lyly, John, 28, 103
Lyndsay, Sir David, 146
Lysaght, Edward, 383
Lyte, Rev. Henry F., 587
Lyttelton, Lord, 374
Lytton, Edward B., Lord, 581
Lytton, Edward R., Earl, 581

M

Macaronic poetry, 1 1
Macaulay, Lord, 471
M'Carthy, Denis Florence, 600
Mackay, Dr. Charles, 593
Macneill, Hector, 378
Macpherson, James, 377
Mahony, Rev. Francis Sylvester,

60 1

Maitland, Sir Richard, 147
Mallet, David, 374
Mannyng, Robert, 54
Mapes, Walter, 66
Marlowe, Christopher, 139
Marston, John, 227
Marvel, Andrew, 31, 245
Mason, William, 367, 620
Masque, The, 26
Massinger, Philip, 29, 228
Matthias, Thomas James, 572
Mayne, Dr. Jasper, 240
Mayne, John, 378
M'Carthy, Denis Florence, 600
Merddin, Emrys, 42
Merrick, Rev. James, 367
Metaphysical poets, 28
Mickle, William Julius, 380
Middleton, Thomas, 145
Milman, Very Rev. Henry Hart, 578
Milnes, Richard M. See Lord

Houghton

Milton, John, 179, 620
Minot, Lawrence, 57
Mitchell, Thomas, 575
Moir, David Macbeth, 579
Monk, Hon. Mrs., 250
Montagu, Charles. See Earl of

Halifax

Montgomery, Alexander, 147
Montgomery, James, 589
Montgomery, Rev. Robert, 573
Montrose, Marquis of, 249
Moore, Thomas, 38, 545
More, Henry, 29
Morris, Hugh, 252
Morris, William, 520
Moss, Rev. T., 369
Motherwell, William, 588
Moultrie, Rev. John, 579
Munday, Anthony, 144

N

Nairne, Baroness, 590
Nash, Thomas, 143
Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of,

233

Nicholl, Robert, 588
Nicholas de Guildford, 68
Nicholson, William, 593
Norton, Thomas, 142
Norton, Hon. Mrs., 579

O

Occleve, Thomas, 17, 86
Opie, Mrs. Amelia, 587
Orm, 51

Orrery, Earl of, 250
Otway, Thomas, 240
Outram, George, 593
Owen, Goronwy, 386
Oxford, Earl of, 138

Parnell, Thomas, 251
Patmore, Coventry, 523
Peele, George, 143
Percy, Bishop Thomas, 36
Philips, Ambrose, 372
Philips, John, 234, 620
Philips, Katherine, 233
Pitt, Rev. Christopher, 370
Poets' Corner, 619
Poets-Laureate, 624
Pollok, Robert, 591
Pomfret, Rev. John, 234
Pope, Alexander, 31, 253
Praed, Winthrop M., 578
Prichard, Rees, 252
Pringle, Thomas, 592
Prior, Matthew, 621
Proctor, Adelaide Anne, 584
Proctor, Bryan Waller, 567
Prynne, Rev. George Rundle, 587
Pye, Henry James, 624

Q

Quarles, Francis, 168

INDEX

631

R

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 1 39
Ramsay, Allan, 31, 309
Randolph, Thomas, 237
Reade, John Edmund, 578
Renaissance, 15
Richard I., 68
Rochester, Earl of, 233
Rochfort, Viscount, 146
Rogers, Samuel, 563
Rolle, Richard, 56
Romance, 1 1

Roscommon, Earl of, 252
Rose, William Stewart, 575
Ross, Alexander, 377
Rosslyn, Earl of, 580
Rossetti, Christina, 568
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 568
Rowe, Nicholas, 242, 621, 624

Sackville, Charles. See Earl of

Dorset
Sackville, Thomas. See Lord

Buckhurst
Sandys, George, 231
Savage, Richard, 372
Sayers, Dr. Frank, 571
Scott, Alexander, 147
Scott, John, 368
Scott, Sir Walter, 36, 526
Scott, William Bell, 593
Scottish poetry, 16
Sedley, Sir Charles, 233
Sempill, Francis, 249
Sempill, Robert, 249
Seward, Anna, 373
Shadwell, Thomas, 241, 620, 624

Shairp, John Campbell, 593

Shakespeare, William, 23, 106,
621

Shakespeare - Bacon Controversy,
604

Shakespeare's name, 616

Sheffield, John. See Duke of
Buckinghamshire

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 39, 438

Shenstone, William, 362

Sherburne, Sir Edward, 246

Shirley, James, 27, 171

Sidney, Sir Philip, 137

Skelton, John, 19, 84

Skinner, Rev. John, 376

Smart, Christopher, 368

Smith, Alexander, 590

Smith, Charlotte, 370

Smith (Neale), Edmund, 246

Smith, Horace, 577

Smith, James, 577

Somerville, William, 362

Sonnet, The, 622

Sotheby, William, 569

Southerne, Thomas, 249

Southey, Caroline, 576

Sou they, Robert, 34, 411, 621, 624

Southwell, Robert, 137

Spencer, Hon. William R., 571

Spenser, Edmund, 22, 94, 620, 624

Sprat, Bishop Thomas, 237

Stanley, Thomas, 237

Stepney, George, 247

Stirling, Earl of, 248

Stirling-Maxwell, Lady. See Hon.

Mrs. Norton
Storer, Thomas, 138

Strangford, Viscount, 575

Strode, Rev. Dr. William, 237

Suckling, Sir John, 27, 243

Surrey, Earl of, 19, 123

Surtees Psalter, The, 1 1

Swain, Charles, 587

Swift, Jonathan, 338

Sylvester, Joshua, 141

Symonds, John Addington, 585

Talfourd, Sir Thomas N., 40, 578

Taliesin, 2, 42

Tannahill, Robert, 379

Tate, Nahum, 252, 624

Taylor, Anne, 573

Taylor, Sir Henry, 40, 585

Taylor, Jane, 573

Taylor, John, 229

Taylor, William, 569

Tennant, William, 589

Tennyson, Lord, 33, 40, 473, 620,

624

Thackeray, William M., 582
Thorn, Wiliiam, 593
Thomas the Rhymer. See Ercii-

doun

Thomson, Alexander, 381
Thomson, James, 31, 315, 621
Thomson, James, 594
Thomson, Very Rev. William, 363
Thrale, Mrs. (Mrs. Piozzi), 366
Thurlow, Lord, 569
Tickell, Thomas, 371,
Tighe, Mrs. Mary, 383
Traveller's Song, 49
Trench, Archbishop Richard C., 559
Triads, 2

Troubadours and Trouveres, 10
Turberville, George, 138
Turner, Charles Tennyson, 481
Tusser, Thomas, 135

032

INDEX

Udall, Rev. Nicholas, 142

Vaughan, Henry, 29, 246
Vaux, Lord Thomas, 135
Vedder, David, 593
Vere, Sir Aubrey de, 598
Vere, Aubrey Thomas de, 598
Vere, Edward. See Earl of Oxford

W

Wace, Maister, 55, 66
Waller, Edmund, 27, 221
Waller, Dr. John Francis, 602
Walsh, William, 236
War poems, 9
Warner, William, 137
Warton, Rev. Dr. Joseph, 369
Warton, Rev. Thomas, 368, 624
Watson, Thomas, 139
Watts, Alaric A., 580
Watts, Dr. Isaac, 362
Webster, John, 227
West, Dr. Gilbert, 374
West, Richard, 384
Whetstone, George, 143
White, Henry Kirke, 387
Whitehead, Paul, 375
Whitehead, William, 368, 624

Wilde, Lady (Speranza), 599

Wilde, Oscar, 602

Wilde, Richard Henry, 595

Wilkie, Dr. William, 380

Williams, Sir Charles H., 361

Williams, Helen Maria, 571

Williams, Rev. Isaac, 583

Williams, Richard Dalton, 600

Williams, Robert, 603

Wilmot, John. See ' Earl of
Rochester

Wilson, Alexander, 378

Wilson, John, 374

Wilson, Professor John (Christo-
pher North), 543

Winchelsea, Anne, Countess of, 238

Wircker, Nigel, 67

Wither, George, 242

Wolcot, Dr. John, 370

Wolfe, Rev. Charles, 594

Wolston, 8

Wordsworth, William, 33, 35, 39,
390, 621, 624

Wot ton, Sir Henry, 232

Wrangham, Ven. Francis, 574

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 19, 129

Wyntoun, Andrew, 68

Yalden, Thomas, 374
Young, Rev. Edward, 258

THE END

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