Shakspeare and the poets of the former age speak of love! How different the impassioned tone of old Middleton, who says The treasures of the deep are not so precious How differently Master Chapman; who asks, And didst thou know the comfort of two hearts As to joy one joy, and think both one thought; But in the times, when the little work before us was published, it does not seem that he who wrote of love was required to feel it; ' poets,' as Cowley observes, in his preface to his Mistress,' 'were scarcely thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love; in other words, first trying their pens in love-verses before they girded themselves up for more important undertakings. The truth of the matter is, it was the fashion for men of polite accomplishments to amuse themselves and their friends in this way. And whether they possessed, or fancied a mistress of undeniable charms, it was pretty nearly the same thing. The verses were not supposed to be the dictates of passion, but the amusements of an idle hour; not the tributes of deep affection, but the compliments of gallantry. And if, in the course of this exercise, the writer seldom reached either sublimity or pathos, yet practice gave him facility and sometimes elegance of composition. If he did not discover a hidden vein of genius in himself, and become a real poet, as Cowley and one or two others did, yet, he contented himself with the praise of an accomplished versifier. This is nearly all the merit which Robert Heath, the poet before us, has any right to claim, and that he has not been successful in maintaining with posterity. In truth, they who look into his volume with any other but a Retrospective' eye, will probably lay it down with feelings little short of contempt. But we are not accustomed thus to give way to despair. We have taken upon ourselves to read for those whose time is too valuable, or whose patience is too small to read, for themselves, and are not easily damped by page after page of frigid hyperbole, or perverse conceit. In the dullest writers, a spark of brighter intelligence is sometimes visible; and in the authors, whose chief fault or rather misfortune it is that they lived in an age when false principles and bad taste ruled the fashion, it is hard if the natural genius of the man does not now and then break out into strains worth recording. And in the worst case, when a rhymester has little to recommend him but long practice with his pen, we consider ourselves unfortunate indeed, if we do not find his verse run sometimes with ease, and occasionally mount to elegance. Such perhaps, if not greater, is the merit of the following stanzas, being the three first of the verses entitled, What is Love?' ""Tis a child of phansie's getting, Brought up between hope and fear, "Tis a perpetual vestal fire Whose smoak like incense doth aspire, It is a soft magnetick stone, Attracting hearts by sympathie, Both discoursing secretlie: Fixing thus two lovers' eies 'Tis the spheres' heavenly harmonie And every sound expressively Marries sweetly with the like: 'Tis the world's everlasting chain And bid them like the fixed wain Unmov'd to bide." The following song, also, possesses similar merit, perhaps in a higher degree. "Invest my head with fragrant rose "Tis wine and love, and love in wine, "Tis wine and love, and love in wine, The stanzas to Clarastella, which we shall next extract, are of a higher order of poetry, and combine with exquisite ease of versification considerable moral beauty. ""Tis not your beautie I admire, Nor the bright star-light of each eie, Your comly presence takes not me, Nor your much more inviting meen; How blind is that philosophie Doth onely natʼral bodies know? And every part, thy all; thy soul." In the following lines, which commence The Farewell to Clarastella, the reader will see how the poet endeavours to cast himself into a huge fit of melancholy-but in vain.-He threatens a storm, but produces only a drizzling shower. The lines, however, are not unworthy of quotation. "Passion o'me! why melt I thus with griefe Yet I must love her stil: O cruel fate! This beginning of a Protest of Love by Damon to Stella, is also pretty. "When I thee all o'r do view, I all o'r must love thee too. By that smooth forehead, wher's exprest Or the maiden daffadillies: By that ivorie porch, thy nose: Those flowrie meadows 'twixt them stand: By each pearl-tipt ear by nature, as On each a jewel pendant was: By those lips all dew'd with bliss, Made happy in each other's kiss." The stanzas called Clarastella's Indictment, though founded on a conceit, are ingenious, and we wish all the rest of the volume had been as amusing: "My heart was slain when none was by Durst itself do this act? No a strange hand did shoot that dart Then I'm o'th' fact acquitted, now The proof is plain, the boy that lies Did do this wicked murther. Witness your lips all stain'd with red, The crimson bloud sticks there, And cry we guiltie are. And your distorted angry brow In your heart's trembling doth appear You'r by your tongue bewraid, Which silently accusing, tels That 'twas by you, none els, By signs thus murther's oft reveal'd, you then, If stil a cruel mind you bear, May each man prove, when ere You love, unkind agen." Out of the verses To Clarastella on Valentine's Day, some may be selected of more than ordinary elegance. The lover steals to the couch of the unconscious fair one, and, while gazing on her reposing beauty, exclaims : "Behold where Innocence herself doth lie Clad in her white array! Fair deitie! |