THE CAVALIER POETS 23 TO CUPID. Nimble boy, in thy warm flight, Shall the perfumed hearse beset; Other Cavalier lyrists are Sir JOHN SUCKLING, who wrote some fifteen years later, and RICHARD LOVELACE, who indited the typical song of aristocratic insubordination, as late as 1642 and onwards. The courtly race reemerged after the Restora tion in Sedley and Dorset, and was very melodiously revived in Rochester. Like his latest scholar, Carew made a very pious end; but the lives of all these men had been riotous and sensuous, and their songs were struck from their wild lives like the sparks from their rapiers. Of a different class, superficially, were the lyrics of Habington and of GEORGE HERBERT, a devout Catholic gentleman and a mystical Anglican priest. Here there was more artifice than in Carew, and less fire. Herbert, in particular, is the type of the maker of conceits. Full of delicate ingenuity, he applies the tortured methods. of Donne to spiritual Sir John Suckling From a Portrait after Vandyck experience, gaining more lucidity than his master at the expense of a good deal of intensity. But Herbert also, in his own field, was a courtier, like the lyrists of the Flesh, and he is close to Suckling and the other Royalists in the essential temper of his style. He was himself a leader to certain religious writers of the next generation, whose place is at the close of this chapter. The Temple is by far the best-known book of verses of the whole school, and it deserves, if hardly that pre-eminence, yet all its popularity. Herbert has an extraordinary tenderness, and it is his privilege to have been able to clothe the common aspirations, fears, and needs of the religious mind in language more truly poetical than has been employed by any other Englishman. He is often extravagant, but rarely dull or flat; his greatest fault lay in an excessive pseudo-psychological ingenuity, which was a snare to all these lyrists, and in a tasteless delight in metrical innovations, often as ugly as they were unprecedented. He sank to writing in the shape of wings and pillars and altars. On this side, in spite of the beauty of their isolated songs and passages, the general decadence of the age was apparent in the lyrical writers. There was no principle of poetic style recognised, and when the spasm of creative passion was over, the dullest mechanism seemed good enough to be adopted. There are whole pages of Suckling and Lovelace which the commonest poetaster would now blush to print, and though it may be said that few of these writers lived to see their poems through the press, and had therefore no opportunity for selection, the mere preservation of so much crabbed rubbish cannot be justified. Title-page of Herbert's "Temple " Sir John Suckling (1609-1640) was born at Whitton House, Twickenham, and was baptized on the 10th of February 1609. "His father was but a dull fellow," but he took after his mother, a brilliant woman, sister to Lord Treasurer Middlesex; she died in 1613. Suckling was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; he early showed a remarkable talent for languages. His father died in 1627, leaving large estates to his young son of eighteen. Suckling started for the Grand Tour, and in 1631, being in Germany, he joined the Marquis of Hamilton's army, and fought under Gustavus Adolphus at Leipzig and Magdeburg. He returned to England late in 1632, bringing with him a splendid reputation for physical and intellectual accomplishments. He was famous at court "for ready and sparkling wit"; he was rich, handsome, and extravagantly ostentatious, but he gambled so recklessly that one day his sisters came to the Piccadilly bowling-green "crying for the fear he should lose all their portions." About 1635, his fortunes having become impaired by the absurd magnificence of his life, Suckling, who had lately been knighted, fell into disgrace with the king, and was dismissed the court. But that "merry wench," Lady Moray, as is told us in a pleasant anecdote by Aubrey, would not forsake an old friend, and her example soon prevailed, even with the king. In 1637 was circulated The Sessions of the Poets, and in 1638 Aglaura. By care he seems to have recovered his fortunes, for we find him travelling "like a young prince for all manner of equipage and convenience, with a a cart-load of books." His play, The Goblins, was produced in 1638, and in 1639 he printed a third drama, The Discontented Colonel. At the breaking out of the Civil War, Suckling spent £12,000 in fitting out a troop of horsemen in the king's service; but these splendid fellows, in their white doublets and scarlet breeches and feathers, fled at Dunse like their dingier brethren. Suckling lost fame, fortune, and confidence in the future of his country; he found himself involved in a Royalist plot, and his nerve seems to have betrayed him. Flying to Paris, and finding himself reduced to penury, he bought poison from an Frontispiece to Suckling's "Fragmenta Aurea" of 1646 apothecary and killed himself. The exact date of this event is not known; but it probably occurred before the winter of 1641, when his posthumous papers began to be published. According to another account, he was murdered by his valet. His poems and plays were first collected, as Fragmenta Aurca, in 1646. Suckling was three times painted by Vandyck; he had sandy hair, very bright and roguish eyes, and "a brisk and graceful look." He was the type of the careless, elegant, witty cavalier who lived for pleasure and gallantry. Richard Lovelace (1618-1658), one of the most unfortunate victims of our civil wars, was born at Woolwich in 1618. He was educated at Charterhouse and (1634) at Gloucester Hall, Oxford. He was early "much admired and adored by the female sex," and at the age of but eighteen was, at the request of a great lady to Archbishop Laud, made M.A. in presence of the king and queen. Lovelace entered the army, and in 1639 served as an ensign in the Scotch expedition. After the disaster at Berwick, he withdrew to Lovelace Place, his ancestral residence, whence he emerged in 1642 to represent the Kentish gentry when they petitioned Parliament to restore the king. For this offence the poet was imprisoned (April 30) in the Gatehouse at Westminster; and here he wrote "Stone walls do not a prison make." He was discharged on bail after six weeks' confinement. He continued to spend his money and energy in the king's service. In 1646 he became the colonel of a regiment in France, and was Charles I., Lovelace was set at liberty, but, his fortune by this time being all consumed, he "grew very melancholy, which brought him at length into a consumption"; he "became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars." It is to be feared that this shocking state of things lasted nine or ten years, for it was not until 1658 that Colonel Lovelace died in a very mean lodging in Gunpowder Alley, Shoe Lane. He was buried in the tomb of his family in the church of St. Bride. Lovelace, before his misfortunes, was "incomparably graceful, which drew respect from all men and women." Dulwich College possesses portraits of Lovelace and of his "Althea," but who the latter was has never been discovered. His posthumous poems were published in 1659. TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON. When love with unconfined wings The birds that wanton in the air When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses bound, Our hearts with loyal flames; |