to its historical interest. Since the days | into which our poetry burgeoned under of Horace and Martial it has owed this its radiance, in an atmosphere purified by less to the genius and culture of its au- the Reformation of religion, is favourthors, great as they have often been, than ably illustrated in the specimen-lyrics to the abstract merit of its faithfulness here given of the Elizabethan era. Of as a contemporary mirror and chrono- the manifold elements which then congraph of manners. We use the word tributed to the abounding wealth of namanners here in its largest sense, as the tional life, not a few are thus represented. external index of the moral and intellec-The courtesy and constancy of which tual, religious and political standards ac- Sidney was the foremost type are as mancepted at a given epoch. How strongly ifest in his love-songs ("The Serenade" imprinted upon the face of a literature and "A Ditty") as in the career which are the characteristics of the national life closed so gallantly at Zutphen. Raleigh's whence it has sprung; how closely inter- philosophical “ Description of Love," and woven with its fabric are the beliefs and "Nymph's reply to the passionate Shephabits, the aspirations and tendencies, herd," reminds us that the brilliant courwhich have acquired for the people that tier and adventurous voyager was at the produced it their particular place in his- same time the historian of the world. tory, has been demonstrated by such The verses attributed to Shakespeare, to critics as M. Taine from abundant re- which the latter poem is a reply, "My sources upon an extensive scale. The flocks feed not," and Breton's charming same thesis, however, may admit of illus-madrigal, "In the merry month of May," tration within the limits of a province so restricted as that of vers de société; and in the volume which we have selected as a text-book, the materials have been so skilfully brought together, that the task of assortment for this purpose is comparatively easy. The development of our national character during the last three centuries, the changes which the canons of literary taste, the standards of social morality, the relations of the sexes, and the equilibrium of political forces, have severally undergone in the interval, may here be traced with the least possible fatigue by the light of the most fascinating of studies.

introduce us into the fictitious Arcadia created by Spenser and Sidney, which, however graceful in its origin as an idyllic reflection of the chivalric revival, subsequently degenerated into so poor a sham. There is a truer ring, an unaffected smack of the soil, in such poems as Robert Greene's " 'Happy as a Shepherd " and "Content," wherein the healthy ideal of a country life, for which Englishmen have ever cherished an avowed or a secret yearning, is depicted in admired contrast with the delights of a palace. There is scarcely a period in our literature when the lips of courtiers and statesmen, wits and worldlings, have not, in some form or other, echoed the sentiment of these lines:

The homely house that harbours quiet rest,

The cottage that affords no pride nor care,
The mean that 'grees with country music best,
The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare;
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss.
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.

If the lines of Skelton ("Merry Margaret"), with which the "Lyra Elegantiarum" fitly opens, quaint with insular mannerism and racy of Chaucer's English, mark the stagnant condition of our literature since the impulse imparted to that master's genius by the dawning of the Renaissance in Italy, the accompanying lines of Surrey ("The means to attain happy Life") and of Wyatt ("The one he would love ") owe their thoughtful | Jonson by the addition of classical culcalm and grave sweetness to the influ- ture, make themselves felt in such lyrics ence of that revival at its noontide, and as "To Celia " and " Charis," more than a closer study of those Italian models one counterpart to which the Editor which were still the criterion of literary might have extracted from "The Forest" art in Europe. The luxuriant verdure and "Underwoods." The conceits of

The rough strength and unspoilt grace which were so kindly tempered in Ben

Carew, on the other hand ("Ask me no into the grossest sensualism, his robust more," &c.), seem to betray his infection English instincts, his refined classic culwith the false taste which the " Euphues" ture, his absorption in the pursuit of inof Lyly has the discredit of introducing dividual pleasure and blindness to the into Elizabethan English. The contem- signs of national distress, he aptly exporary poems of Sir Robert Ayton are ad-emplifies a party whose aspect of moral mirable examples of that purer style and intellectual paradox is its distinguishwhich had arisen with Surrey and was to culminate with Milton. Their burden of woman's inconstancy and man's selfrespecting dignity ("I loved thee once," and "I do confess thou'rt smooth and fair") is a favourite theme with the poets of this period, and marks a reaction against the exaggerated ideal of womanhood, which, among other incidents of the Neo-chivalry, Spenser, Sidney, and their fellows had loyally striven to restore. George Wither's "Shall I, wasting in despair," which breathes of the writer's ante-Puritan days, is the bestknown embodiment of this reactionary spirit. It is but a mild prelude to the tone of jovial recklessness and de haut en bas gallantry running through the lyrics of Sir John Suckling. No more characteristic vers de société than his "Careless Lover," "Why so pale?" "Out upon it, I have loved," "The Siege," and "Love and Debt," are to be found in the language. The opening verse of the latter, with its pious aspiration -

That I were fairly out of debt
As I am out of love,

echoes the living voice of the roistering
cavalier, as light-hearted in the day of
prosperity as he was free-handed. The
loyal devotion of which that type was ca-
pable in the crisis of adversity imparts
the glow of inspiration to the exquisite
poems of Lovelace. His "Tell me not,
Sweet, I am unkind," and "To Althea
from prison," familiar as a household
word in every line, are instinct with that
charm of emotional nobleness of which
the thousandth repetition never makes us
weary.

More completely representative of the Cavalier poets is Herrick, of whose delicious lyrics this volume affords many examples. Alike in his chivalrous loyalty avowed the most openly when Fortune was the least favourable to his cause, his outbursts of devotional feeling, his lapses

ing note in history. Of the disastrous defeat which, owing to this instability, his party suffered at the hands of the earnest, strait-laced Puritans, "men of one idea," Herrick bore his full share. Had his political sympathies been less pronounced than they were, such an amorous bacchanalian priest would never have been allowed to hold the cure of souls at Dean Prior while a painful preacher of the Word" could be found to take his place. To the pressure of poverty consequent upon his supersession and exile in London, we owe the publication of his "Noble Numbers," a collection exclusively sacred, in 1647, and his "Hesperides," a collection miscellaneously profane, in 1648. It is significant of the writer's character that the former opens with his prayer for the Divine forgiveness of the very

unbaptized rhymes

Writ in my wild unhallowed times, which in the following year he permitted

himself to include within the latter. "Unbaptized," in the strictest sense of the word, many of these verses assuredly are. The poet in his distress seems to have raked together every scrap that he had written, and mingled the freshest tokens of his inspiration with the sickliest and the foulest records of his bad taste, without any attempt at assortment. Whatever drawback be allowed for the inconsistency of the poet and the inequality of his verse, the "Hesperides " will still be cherished among our most precious lyrical treasures. Herrick is eminent among those poets of society whose art has a special charm irrespective of its representative or historical interest. That quality which is universally recognized as grace, undefinable but unmistakable as an aroma, seldom deserts him even when his theme is the coarsest. In choice simplicity of language and orderly freedom of versification few of our

highest poets have equalled him. These historical significance greater than would merits are most observable in the poems otherwise belong to it. that approach nearest to classic models; as, for example, the idyll of "Corinna's going a-maying," and the elegiac verses "To Perilla; "* but his least studied effusions bear marks of the same training. Take, for instance, these lines “To Dianeme: "

The excess of the carnal over the spiritual element in the prevalent conception of love, may explain the degeneration of feeling into sentiment, and of fancy into ornament, that characterizes the erotic poetry of the Restoration. Sedley, Rochester, and Etherege scarcely pretend to passion, and are content to display their skill in concealing its absence under the glitter of verbal smartOne unique example, Waller's charming poem on a girdle, redeems the cycle of contemporary love-verse from a wholesale charge of insincerity : —

ness. yours yet free:

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which, star-like, sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud, that you can see
All hearts your captives,
Be you not proud of that rich hair,
Which wantons with the love-sick air;
Whenas 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.

In his erotics, which form nine-tenths of the "Hesperides," tender feeling and delicate fancy are too often tainted with an impurity that it is difficult to eliminate, but there are a few like the following, which contain not a word that could be wished away:

I am bound, and fast bound, so
That from thee I cannot go :
If I could, I would not so!

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 has done.

It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely dear.
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love
Did all within this circle move!

A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair;
Give me but what this riband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.

Lord Dorset's "Phillis, for shame!" has also an echo of truth in its tone of grave remonstrance with a half-hearted mistress, while his spirited lyric, "To all you Ladies now on Land," written on the eve of a naval engagement with the Dutch, affords a rare glimpse of the healthy English temper which not all the corruption of Court-life and the deca

later Stuarts had been able to vitiate. Of the greatest poets of the age we find but scanty record in the "Lyra." Milton is wholly absent. Dryden is only represented by two frigid pieces of sentiment

and one

Although as a painter of manners Her-dence of statesmanly honour under the rick has left no single sketch so complete as Suckling's famous "Ballad on a Wedding," his profuse allusions to contemporary customs, games, articles of dress, furniture, and viands, afford ample materials from which a picture of his times may be constructed. The lewdness that had been fatal to him under the Commonwealth was no doubt the ground of his popularity under the Restoration; a popularity to which no consideration of the obligations involved in his calling can be supposed to have offered any hindrance. His poetry thus acquires an

* The description of morning-dew in the former, "Take no care For jewels for your gown,or hair. The childhood of the day hath kept Against you come some orient pearls unwept; and the phrase applied to death in the latter, "The cool and silent shades of sleep,' nay serve as illustrations of his exquisite diction.

fine fragment, "Fortune," which scarcely belongs to the category of vers de société. Cowley, however, appears to better advantage in his graceful poem,

"A Wish," wherein the ideal of rural contentment, so dear to the national imagination, reappears under conditions as little favourable as possible to its birth and culture.

The influence that has left most trace upon the social poetry of the next generation is that of the sovereignty which France imposed upon our morals and taste at the very time when we had dethroned her from the empire of land and sea. The prevalence of a cynical, selfish view of life, of a practical contempt

Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
She drops her arms, to gain the field:
Secures her conquest by her flight:
And triumphs, when she seems to yield.

The admirable burlesque of Boileau's well have been added to the political poems in Mr. Locker's collection, and the select epigrams which illustrate the philosophy of "Carpe diem" include none happier than this paraphrase of the kindred axiom, "Quid sit futurum cras fuge quærere:

For what to-morrow shall disclose

May spoil what you to-night propose; England may change or Chloe stray: Love and life are for to-day.

veiled under a theoretical reverence for virtue, the superiority of wit to truth, of manner to matter, are salient features in the lighter literature of the time. The frivolity and caprice of fashion which Addison and Steele unweariedly commemorated in easy and graceful prose," Ode on the taking of Namur" might as if the scope of human activity contained no other theme of equal interest, were immortalized by Prior and Pope in airy and sparkling verse. Foreign words and phrases, appropriate to their subject, then openly intruded into the language of Chaucer and Shakespeare, and have left an impression of affectation and sickliness upon a literature otherwise manly and sound. We shall be understood as referring only to its intellectual characteristics; sound, in a moral sense, being the last epithet that could justly be ap- Prior's miscellaneous poems, the outplied to such a writer as Prior. He rep- come of a rapid and shrewd observation resents but too faithfully the standard of incessantly at work during a vicissitous cacontemporary society. The duplicity of reer as man of letters, diplomatist, placeeminent statesmen and officials, the tol- man, and pensioner, contain many a lifeerance extended in the highest circles to like sketch of the phenomena and charthe grosser vices, and the lewdness ac-acters of his time; of the vices in which cepted as indispensable to the attractions passion ran riot, and the follies in which of fiction and the drama, form a dark ennui sought distraction; of the empty background to the glories which science braggarts who set up for wits, and the and philosophy, strategy and policy, have painted hags who posed as beauties. If shed upon our Augustan age. The his satires upon the aristocratic world shadow falls upon the career and is re- portray its worst side and excite our disflected in the verse of Prior. Shifty and gust, his familiar epistles incidentally brilliant in public, licentious and urbane disclose another side which deserves our in private life, he wrote as he lived. Wit admiration. The relation between men and worldly wisdom, the Epicurean's of rank and men of genius, heretofore one creed and the sensualist's experience, of ostentatious protection on the part of are embodied in lyrics worthy of Horace, the patron and obsequious dependence and epigrams only excelled by Pope. on that of the client, could scarcely have "Dear Chloe," "The Merchant to secure been in a healthier condition than when his treasure," and "The Secretary," are Prior, Pope, and Swift associated with of course included in the "Lyra;" but Oxford and Bolingbroke, Addison and we wonder at the omission of a poem so Steele with Halifax and Somers; when characteristic of the writer's elegant in- mental equality effaced social inequality, sincerity as the lines addressed to a lady and an honourable interchange was efwho broke off an argument which she fected between intelligent sympathy and had commenced with him. The follow- well-judging generosity on the one side, ing are amongst its best verses: — and self-respectful friendship and uncovetous gratitude on the other.

66

In the dispute whate'er I said,

My heart was by my tongue belied; And in my looks you might have read How much I argued on your side.

The miscellaneous poems of Pope are so familiarly known that there is no need to dwell upon their abundant illustrations of contemporary manners. Though properly excluded from the "Lyra" by their length and elaboration, the "Rape of the Lock" and some of the satires are vers de société of the highest order. The impression which they leave differs little from that conveyed by the poems of Prior as to the moral unsoundness underlying the intellectual brilliance of the age: a condition to which the idiosyncrasy of

the poet, after the light recently thrown | tined for marriage with the housemaid, a upon it by Mr. Elwin, must be admitted captain of cavalry as taking precedence to afford a parallel. In the verse of Pope, of a Dean at dinner and setting the table however, as in that of Prior and the less in a roar by ridicule of his cloth. polished but not less vigorous verse of As the eighteenth century advances Swift, there are distinct signs of health- the fervour of political feeling became ier influences being at work. The stand-prominent in its vers de société. Lady ard of mental and moral culture which Mary Wortley Montagu's defence of Sir men demanded of women, and women Robert Walpole ("Such were the lively were willing to attain, must have risen Eyes "), and Garrick's "Advice to the considerably above that of the previous Marquis of Rockingham," may pair with generation, before a writer so conver- Sir C. Hanbury Williams' bitter diatribes sant with the world as Pope would have upon Pulteney, as average specimens of expected a female audience for his sec- their class, the fault of both the praise ond "Essay," or a wit like Swift have and the blame being that they are too dreamed of addressing his mistress in the obviously personal to be historically truststrain of the birthday-lines "To Stella." worthy. The blind violence of partyGross on the one hand and fulsome on spirit in this age, and the difficulty that a the other as the tone of "Augustan statesman had to meet in obtaining a fair literature often is when its theme is trial or a candid estimate of his policy, womanhood, the height to which some of are excellently portrayed in the following its best writers show themselves capable stanzas from the pen of a neutral byof rising marks a sensible approach stander whose name has not been handed towards that ideal of sexual relations down to us : —

Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities -

which it has been the proud boast of our own day to recognize more approximately.

Know, minister! whate'er you plan,
What'er your politics, great man,

You must expect detraction;
Though of clean hand and honest heart,
Your greatness must expect to smart
Beneath the rod of faction.

Like blockheads eager in dispute,
The mob, that many-headed brute,

All bark and bawl together;
For continental measures some,
And some cry, keep your troops at home,
And some are pleased with neither.

Lo, a militia guards the land!
Thousands applaud your saving hand,

And hail you their protector;
While thousands censure and defame,
And brand you with the hideous name
Of state-quack and projector...
Corruption's influence you despise ;
These lift your glory to the skies,

Indications of the effect produced by the great constitutional crisis through which the nation had recently passed, of a diffusion of sympathy due to the unanimity with which liberty had been welcomed, and the need of maintaining it against a common foe, of the relaxation of the barriers between social grades, are perceptible in such poems as Swift's "Hamilton's Bawn" and "Mrs. Harris's Petition." His representation of the footing upon which masters stood with their servants, Prior's portraiture in "Down Hall" of the good fellowship subsisting between townsmen and rustics, and Addison's sketch in "Sir Roger de Coverley" of the squire's relations with his tenants, point, each in a different direction, to the prevalence of a national good-humour. How "slow to move," on the other hand, the English temperament The prevalence of drinking-songs has always been in obliterating class- among Georgian lyrics has an obviously distinctions and removing admitted anom- political connection. With a Pretender alies, the two poems just named illustrate Charles Stuart over the water, and a Pawith equal clearness. The social status triot Jack Wilkes at home, no sturdy of the clergy, as Macaulay from ample Constitutionalist wanted an excuse or lost materials describes it to have been in the an opportunity of celebrating "Church reign of Charles II.,† cannot have sensi- and King" in toast and chorus. There bly improved at a time when Swift repre- is an echo of their hearty English voices sents a chaplain in a noble family as des-in such a rough carol as the following:

Those pluck your glory down:
So strangely different is the note
Of scoundrels that have right to vote,
And scoundrels that have none.

Then him let's commend
That is true to his friend

And the Church and the Senate would settle;