that polished banter, which gave to Dryden his extraordinary influence as a satirist. A few years before the Revolution, two peers distinguished themselves above their meaner contemporaries by producing certain critical pamphlets in verse, which were of a kind new in English, and which have preserved a niche for their authors in the history of literature. Of these two writers the one who most nearly deserves the title of poet is John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), celebrated in Absalom and Achitophel as "sharp-judging Adriel, the muses' friend, Himself a muse." Mulgrave circulated in 1679 an Essay on Satire, and published in 1682 an Essay on Poetry, both in heroic verse. These pieces were anonymous, and they were so cleverly versified that the town insisted on thinking that Dryden was their author. In consequence of the following passage in the Essay on Satire, the Earl of Rochester had Dryden cruelly beaten by a troop of hired bravos, in a narrow street off Covent Garden, on a winter's night in 1679: "Last enter Rochester, of sprightly wit, But of this odd ill-nature to mankind Himself alone the ill effects will find: So envious hags in vain their witchcraft try, Mulgrave's Essay on Poetry contains some terse and effective lines, one or two of which have passed into current use. He lays down sensible rules for practitioners in the various departments of poetic art, but he was not very successful himself in the composition of odes, tragedies, and epistles. Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1634-1685) was a man who spent the greater part of his life in France, and was steeped in the erudition of the French Jesuits. About 1670 he wrote a short critical poem, called an Essay 2 on Translated Verse, which he was persuaded to print in 1680. It is in heroic couplets, but towards the close Roscommon expresses himself strongly in favour of the "Roman majesty" of blank verse, and gives a sort of précis of the sixth book of Paradise Lost in that measure. In 1684 he published a paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry in blank verse, and Roscommon is remarkable as the only writer between Milton and the end of the century who discarded rhyme in serious non-dramatic verse. A word must be said here about the songs which continued to be written almost to the very end of the century, and sometimes with extraordinary charm. Dryden's contributions to this class of poetry have already been mentioned. The Cavalier lyrists of the age of Charles I. bequeathed not a little of their skill to the best of their successors, at least until the Revolution. The finest songs of the Restoration are those of a very infamous person, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), but Aphra Behn, Sedley, Lord Dorset (1637-1706), and Etheredge all wrote well-turned verses of this class with considerable charm and grace. These are examples from Mrs. Behn and Rochester respectively: "Love in fantastic triumph sat, Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed, And strange tyrannic power he showed; "From me he took his sighs and tears, But my poor heart alone is harmed, While thine the victor is, and free." GARTH "My dear Mistress has a heart Soft as those kind looks she gave me And her eyes, she did enslave me ; She's so wild and apt to wander, "Melting joys about her move, Killing pleasures, wounding blisses, And her lips can arm with kisses; Angels listen when she speaks, ; She's my delight, all mankind's wonder, But my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder." 33 All through the seventeenth century the lamp of Doric song was kept alight in Scotland by one interesting family, the Sempills of Beltrees, who passed it on from father to son. Francis Sempill, who died about 1683, was the author of the original version of Auld Langsyne, which he opens thus: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never thought upon? Is thy kind heart now grown sae cauld, On auld langsyne?" It is instructive to compare this with Burns's celebrated adaptation of the same theme. Towards the close of the century there came forward two interesting writers with a notice of whom we may close this branch of our inquiry. Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1719) was a resident fellow of a Cambridge college, until, in mature life, he became a physician, and was called up to London to administer that newly-founded dispensary in the College of Physicians in which III Ꭰ gratuitous advice was given to the poor. The apothecaries viciously attacked the pious work of charity, and Garth held their meanness up to ridicule in a mock-heroic poem, The Dispensary (1699), which passed through a great number of editions. It was through the zeal of Garth that Dryden received due honour in burial; and he was prominent in founding the Kit-Kat Club. In 1715 his topographical poem of Claremont appeared, in direct emulation of Denham's Cooper's Hill. The fun has all faded out of The Dispensary, and Garth is no longer in the least degree attractive. But his didactic verse is the best between Dryden and Pope, though we see beginning in it the degradation of the overmannered style of the eighteenth century. In the fourth canto of the Dispensary Garth sums up, with all his characteristic good nature, and more vivacity than usual, the condition of English poetry at the close of the seventeenth century: "Mortal, how dar'st thou with such lies address My awful seat, and trouble my recess? In Essex marshy hundreds is a cell, Where lazy fogs, and drizzling vapours dwell: But in your lines let energy be found, I LADY WINCHELSEA And gentle Isis claims the ivy crown, To bind th' immortal brows of Addison; As tuneful Congreve tries his rural strains, Pan quits the woods, the list’ning fauns the plains; And Britain, since Pausanias was writ, Knows Spartan virtue, and Athenian wit, When Stepney paints the godlike acts of kings, Or, what Apollo dictates, Prior sings: The banks of Rhine a pleased attention show, And silver Sequana forgets to flow.' 35 Of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), it is impossible to say whether she was the last of the old or the first of the new romantic school. At a period when the study of external nature was completely excluded from poetry, Lady Winchelsea introduced into her verses novel images taken directly from rustic life as she saw it round about her. Her Nocturnal Reverie has been highly praised by Wordsworth, and is a singularly beautiful description of the sights and sounds that attend a summer night in the country: "In such a night, when passing clouds give place, Where scattered glow-worms,—but in twilight fine,— |