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distaste on the wit and licence of the court poets of the age, and were read with fervor and applauded with zeal. Afterwards, when a more polished versification was successfully cultivated, and poetry was written with greater system and design, the ruggedness of Quarles' compositions caused them to fall into disrepute; but they have survived this temporary neglect, and his imagination and power are still appreciated.

There are many lyrical pieces of HERRICK'S of great beauty, but his flowers were hid amidst a wilderness of weeds. His Ode to Blossoms is quaint, tender, and unaffected:

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fade 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, were ye born to be

An hour or half's delight,

And so to bid good night?
'Tis pity Nature brought ye forth,
Merely to shew your worth,

And lose you quite.

But your 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.

WITHERS' writings present a mass of wire-drawn lines, redeemed by an occasional burst of inspiration, a sensibility, and poetical dreaminess, that tended somewhat to sustain an elegant but languid versification, and a frequent poverty of idea.

BROWNE, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, cultivated with moderate success a style of composition that has never arrived at perfection in England. Whether it be

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that there is a want of sentiment in the lower classes of our countrymen, or an uncongenial coldness in our climate, certain it is that pastoral verse has never attained a position in our poetry. In the drama (as for instance in the Gentle Shepherd) and also in the Songs and Tales of Burns, and other writers, rural life has been invested with poetic interest; but the Eclogues of Browne, Phillips, and Pope are little read and less admired. The real truth is, that the state of society they represent is too primitively romantic to appear probable; while their language and sentiments seem much more like those of fine gentlemen and ladies playing shepherds and shepherdesses, than the rude but bold thoughts and words of rustic minstrels, whose feelings are inartificial, and whose affections bound rather to material objects than fanciful imagery.

GILES FLETCHER and CRASHAW devoted their muses to sacred subjects, and were almost the first who led the way to that tone and majesty, that dignity of truth with

which religious poetry is capable of being inspired. But Crashaw slighted not the more worldly muse, nor disdained to pen a sportive epigram, or translate an ode of Catullus. His Music's Duel represents a contest between a lyrist and a nightingale for the palm of song; and the poem, although overloaded with words, has much of the mystic sweetness and imagination of Shelley's verse. The bird follows the changing music of the lutes-master,' through all its windings and modulations, and her bosom heaves,

Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Wing'd with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the way'd back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs; she qualifies their zeal

With the cool epod of a graver note,

Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat

Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;

Her little soul is ravish'd: and so pour'd

Into loose extacies, that she is plac'd

Above herself, music's enthusiast.

Again her human rival concentrates his powers in one most finished burst.

This done, he lists what she would say to this,
And she, although her breath's late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note.

Alas! in vain! for while (sweet soul) she tries
To measure all those wild diversities

Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, rais'd in a natural tone;
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies.
She dies and leaves her life the victor's prize,
Falling upon his lute. O fit to have,

(That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave.

They

The best compositions of DRUMMOND of Hawthornden are some beautiful sonnets and madrigals. are classical, imaginative, and forcible, yet unequally sustained, and it often occurs that a fine idea is marred by a mean or conceited expression. His language fetters instead of setting free his thoughts. The fire is not wanting, but it is occasionally choked by the very fuel that should support it; the design is lofty, but often obscured by a want of harmony in the detail. These observations might be illustrated better than by the following sonnet, which teems with beauty, and is one of the best specimens of Drummond :

Now while the night her sable veil hath spread,

And silently her resty coach doth roll,

Rousing with her from Tethys' azure bed

Those starry nymphs which dance about the pole

While Cynthia, in purest cypress clad,

The Latmian shepherd in a trance descries,

And looking pale from height of all the skies,
She dyes her beauties in a blushing red.

While sleep, in triumph, closed hath all eyes,
And birds and beasts a silence sweet do keep;
And Proteus' monstrous people in the deep,

The winds and waves hush'd up, to rest entice-
I wake, I turn, I weep, opprest with pain,
Perplex'd in the meanders of my brain.

CAREW, who wrote songs of gallantry, yet not free from licentiousness; LOVELACE, tender and elegant, yet conceited; SUCKLING, florid and epigrammatic, and DAVENANT, often fanciful and brilliant, were the poets of the court of Charles the First. The lines of the last, addressed to that monarch's queen, Henrietta Matilda, are full of the polish, expression, and refinement of Pope. He calls her

Fair as unshaded light; or as the day

In its first birth, when all the year was May;
Sweet, as the altar's smoke, or as the new
Unfolded bud, swell'd by the early dew;
Smooth, as the face of waters first appear'd,
'Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard:

Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far

Than in their sleep forgiven hermits are.*

The following little piece by Carew, entitled Red and White Roses, is in his liveliest style:

Read in these roses the sad story

Of my hard fate, and your own glory :

In the white you may discover
The paleness of a fainting lover;

In the red, the flames still feeding

On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding.
The white will tell you how I languish,

And the red express my anguish :

*Pope has imitated some of these lines in his Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard. The life of the recluse lover is represented to be

Still as the seas, 'ere winds were taught to blow,

Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;

Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiven,

And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heaven,

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