personifications of natural objects, such as hills, rivers, and woods. The prevailing taste of Drayton is a mixture of the historical and the poetical; and besides the Polyolbion, he wrote several poems, in which these two characteristics are very happily blended-such as the Baron's Wars, and England's Heroical Epistles. His miscellaneous writings are chiefly odes and pastorals. As a specimen of his cheerful and vivacious style, we may quote from the Polyolbion a description of the hunting of the hart in the forest of Arden in Warwickshire : THE HUNTING OF THE HART. Now, when the hart doth hear, Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries. Whom when the ploughman meets, his teem he letteth stand, The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollow; When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and huntsman follow; His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length, To any thing he meets now at his sad decay. The cruel rav'nous hounds and bloody hunters near, This noblest beast of chase, that vainly doth but fear, Some bank or quickset finds; to which his haunch opposed, * A peculiar kind of blast upon the hunting horn. SANDYS.-HALL. The churlish-throated hounds then holding him at bay, 39 *GEORGE SANDYS (1577-1643), was the author of the first literary production of the American colonies. This was in 1622 when he was Treasurer of Virginia. He was one of those eminent men and scholars, who emigrated to America, or resided in it for a period, whose education, was completed at the English universities. Mention will soon be made of other names among them, in the proper places. These, in all respects, were equal to the distinguished men and writers of the parent country, in the same professsion, or department of intellectual exertion, and may be noticed promiscuously with the latter. The work of Sandys referred to, was a Translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, into English verse. He was the author of several other reputable works. Both Dryden, and Pope appear to have considered him an admirable poet. He travelled extensively, and finally died in his native land.* JOSEPH HALL (1574-1656), bishop of Norwich, was the first who wrote satire in English verse with any degree of elegance or success. His satires refer to general objects, and present some just pictures of the more remarkable anomalies in human character: they are also written in a style of greater polish and volubility than most of the compositions of this age. Richard Corbet, a preceding bishop of Norwich, but a contemporary of Hall, wrote some facetious poetry. Thomas Carew, a gay and courtly writer, flourished in the time of Charles I., whom he served in the office of sewer: his poetry is chiefly amorous, and rather more full of conceits than that of his contemporaries. The best lyrical pieces of ROBERT HERRICK, as selected from the heaps of trash which form the bulk of his works, display a redundancy of fancy, and a refinement of feeling which make it somewhat surprising that he is so little known as a poet. He was a country clergyman, and seems to have had a peculiar pleasure in rural life. Some of his poems breathe the tender passion in its * AM. ED. softest accents; others moralize in a strain of pleasing melancholy, upon natural objects; others again consist of mirthful measures, tripping along like a fairy dance. In the following little poem, there is a moral pathos of the most touching kind : SIR JOHN SUCKLING (1613–1641), a zealous partizan of Charles I. at the commencement of the civil war, is distinguished by a happy fancy and an elegant mode of versification, with a descriptive power considerably beyond his contemporaries. His Ballad upon a Wedding, in which he makes one rustic describe to another a city bridal-party, is a masterpiece of gay poetical painting. Richard Lovelace was another of those lively court poets;-conceited, yet elegant and tender,-as, for instance, in his doubly gallant little epigram TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS. Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind True, a new mistress now I chase, And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such SUCKLING.-DAVENANT.-BROWNE.-DONNE. I could not love thee, dear, so much, 41 SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT (1605-1668), considered as a writer of miscellaneous verses, comes under the same description. Few snatches of composition, either in the - preceding or the subsequent age, can match his complimentary lines on Queen Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I. Fair as the unshaded light, or as day In its first birth, when all the year was May; WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645), author of Britannia's Pastorals, wrote with simplicity and feeling above most of his fellows, yet is now almost forgotten. Phineas Fletcher was also eminent in his own time as a pastoral poet. Giles Fletcher and Richard Crashaw chiefly employed themselves in sacred poetry, which was first cultivated in this age with success. Among the writers of miscellaneous poetry must be classed Benjamin Jonson, more celebrated as a dramatist: besides a few serious poems, he wrote a vast number of a humorous and epigrammatic character, which, however, are of little value. One of the most popular productions of the period was the short descriptive poem by Sir John Denham, entitled Cooper's Hill: it was published in 1643, and still holds its place in selections of our best poetry. JOHN DONNE, dean of St. Paul's (1573-1631), stands at the head of a class known in English literary history by the appellation of the Metaphysical Poets, and which comprised Cowley, and a few others who remain to be noticed in a subsequent chapter. Donne and his followers possessed many of the highest requisites of poetry, but they were misled by learning and false taste into such extravagances, both of idea and of language, as rendered all their better qualities nearly useless. They sometimes use natural language, and natural imagery and passion; but it is only by chance. Their works more generally present a chain of overstrained conceits and quibbles. The versification of Donne is rugged, but sometimes displays a passionate energy that almost redeems his besetting vices of thought. Scarcely any one of the poets of this age experienced so absolute an oblivion during the eighteenth century as FRANCIS QUARLES (1592-1644), or has regained so much of his original reputation. Quarles, who was secretary to Archbishop Usher, and afterwards chronologer to the city of London, wrote much in both prose and verse; but his principal work was his Emblems, a set of quaint pictorial designs, referring to moral and religious ideas, and each elucidated by a few appropriate verses. His Enchiridion, a series of moral and political observations, is also worthy of notice. His verses were more popular in their own time, than those of the gayest court poets, being recommended by a peculiar harshness and gloom, accordant with the feelings of a large portion of the people. These were the very peculiarities which, added to their quaintness and obscure language, rendered them the contempt of the succeeding period. In the tine of Pope, the poetry of Quarles was ranked with the meanest trash that then appeared. Latterly, however, these productions have been acknowledged to contain original imagery, striking sentiment, fertility of expression, and happy combinations; and the Emblems, at least, have been reprinted, and assigned a respectable place in the libraries of both the devout, and those who read from motives of taste. During the period embraced by the reign of Elizabeth, poetry was cultivated in Scotland by a few individuals, who, if not so celebrated as Dunbar and Lindsay, were at least worthy followers of the same school. The chief of these were Alexander ScoT, SIR RICHARD MaitLAND, and CAPTAIN ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY. Their poems are chiefly short pieces of a moral, satirical, or descriptive kind; in which the versification is very correct, and the language in general very happy, though the style of the ideas seems a century behind that of the English poetry of the same age. The very limited social intercourse which existed at this period between the two nations, seems to have prevented the poets of Scotland from catching the improved airs of the English muse. |