not to institute a comparison between | but the result in the bulk of these verses the Roman poet's work and that of his successors, but to glance at the songs of those English writers, who, taking him to a great extent as their model, have written the verse of passing moods and emotions, and have not attempted that higher branch of poetry which secures the loftiest renown from posterity. has been most abundant. What a glance at contemporary history we obtain from the time of Raleigh down to our own day through the aid of our minor English poetry! It is as trustworthy as a book of costume, with the addition of a living human interest. Writers of fugitive verses hang, as it were, upon the skirts of the greater poets of their own time, and all that they do takes a tinge from them. Accordingly, we find that the minor verse of the Elizabethan period possesses a nobler expression and a greater sweetness than that of the nineteenth century, from the fact that it was an echo of that sublime period in English literature. The satellites of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson were likely to emit a stronger radiance than those of Wordsworth, Byron, or Tennyson. The grace of the first writers of this humbler poesy has never been sur What do we mean by vers de société if, with Mr. Locker, we must use a French phrase to denote a thing as old as the English language? They are the expression of common sentiment and common feeling in graceful but familiar rhyme. Poetry of this kind excites in us no wonder, no unwonted excitement; but it pleases us because, apparently without effort, it has translated into verse the ordinary sensations of humanity, those which change with the hour, which are again and again renewed, and which are the property of almost every nature. For instance, when a writer of vers de société passed. With every century there has gives us his impressions of female beauty, they are usually drawn from those points of view which belong to common æsthetics, and not from that hidden deeper spring of beauty which has in it something of the spiritual, and which requires the soul of the true poet rightly to apprehend. The arch smile, the dress, the peach-like bloom of the cheek these are the things which arrest the eye of the poet of society just as they are the things which strike the vast majority of men. He who writes of the world must mingle with the world. The most successful and the most brilliant of the school of authors to which we are referring have been those who have lived largely in society; who have studied its movements, its caprices, and its spirit. They have generally been men of ease and observation, and yet men of no settled purpose as regards the expression of their thoughts. They have not so much sought the muse as left the muse to come to them; when she has given them an à propos inspiration they have written. The pen has served as a medium to turn a compliment, to secure a fleeting idea, or to enshrine a random reflection. Such an end may seem trivial, been a corresponding change between the two kinds of verse, though the age must also be counted as a factor in the production of such general result. The writing of this poetry, simple as it appears, requires special gifts. In the first place, terseness is an especial requisite. To be verbose in verse which, as it were, flies with the wind, is to fail in the first principle of the art. The best writer of society verse is always happiest when he is concentrated. Light verse written in cantos unless it took the form of a humorous or satirical narrative like "Don Juan" → would fatigue the reader. It is not the highest kind of genius which devotes itself to this work, and the verbosity which we could tolerate, if we could not always enjoy, in the greater writer becomes insufferable in the lesser. The man who writes vers de société must have as decided a gift in his own form of expression and conception as the artist who takes a higher rank. To quote the words of Isaac D'Israeli :-"It must not be supposed that because these productions are concise they have, therefore, the more facility; we must not consider the genius of a poet diminutive because his pieces are so, nor must we thought, whereas the moderns cram too much into one song. Waller occasionally commits this error, while Cowley is defective through a redundancy of wit. The reader is dazzled by the starting of so many trains of thought, whereas a song should be constructed as we would construct an epigram. call them, as a sonnet has been called, a ancient writers whom he names great in difficult trifle. A circle may be very the art because they pursue a single small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing. The poet to succeed in these hazardous pieces must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of The limitation to which we have comtaste, to whom labour is negligence, re-mitted ourselves will forbid an examinafinement a science, and art a nature. Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity which seems peculiar to those who are accustomed to elegant society. . . . These productions are more the effusions of taste than genius, and it is not sufficient that the poet is inspired by the Muse, he must also suffer his concise pages to be polished by the hand of the Graces." tion of the claims of those who on the Continent first cultivated the art of light versification. But even were the scope widened it would be practically impossible to touch upon the French and Italian writers from the time of the Troubadours and of Ronsard downwards who have attained great proficiency in spontaneous and courtly verse. The two countries named were more prolific in a single age Steele, who himself regarded Sappho, perhaps, than England has been in the Anacreon, and Horace as the completest course of three centuries in the producmodels in this range of verse, was the tion of these writers. But besides their author of a charming paper in his "Guar- excellency in the construction of songs dian,” which really exhausts the subject. and lyrics, the Italians perfected another "These little things," he says, " do not style which finds an admirable exponent require an elevation of thought, nor any in Boiardo, the author of the "Orlando extraordinary capacity, nor an extensive Innamorato," and in Berni, who is rememknowledge; but then they demand great bered principally for his rifacimento of regularity and the utmost nicety; an ex-that celebrated work. This style is full act purity of style, with the most easy of episode and description, and although and flowing numbers; an elegant and un- the element of lightness may be often affected turn of wit, with one uniform and discovered in it, it is scarcely germane to simple design. Greater works cannot our subject. Boiardo's style was first well be without some inequalities and imitated in this country within the presoversights, and they are in them pardona-ent century by Hookham Frere in "Whisble but a song loses all its lustre if it be not polished with the greatest accuracy. The smallest blemish in it, like a flaw in a jewel, takes off the whole value of it. A song is, as it were, a little image in enamel, that requires all the nice touches of the pencil, a gloss, and a smoothness, with those delicate finishing strokes many trains of ideas started; in the which would be superfluous and thrown other we have the bending of the eneraway upon larger figures, where the gies to the complete grasping and setting strength and boldness of a masterly hand forth of one leading thought. So in give all the grace." This description of familiar poetry: "Don Juan" presents what a song should be is extremely felici- us with a series of pictures, but real fugitous, and covers the ground which we are tive verse expends itself in the perfecdesirous to include within the scope of tion of one. The power of improvisathe present article. Steele considers the tion, which was so remarkable a feature tlecraft," and afterwards by Byron in "Beppo," and "Don Juan." But comic epic, or mock heroic poetry, notwithstanding that it possesses the one feature of familiarity common also to lighter verse, is removed from the true subject of this inquiry. In the one we have He that loves a rosy cheek Or a coral lip admires, Kindle never-dying fires; of the Italian poetic genius generally, and of the French at certain spasmodic periods, has been almost wholly absent in England. We have no parallel to the court of King René, which swarmed with singers of no mean order and musicians of a sweet and delicate if not powerful melody. We are a heavy and practical, in distinction from a light and sunny race; and our accomplishments in fugitive verse cannot for grace and elegance be ranged in comparison with those of France and Italy. Such as we are, we It would be a task to scrutinize at length are, however; and we shall doubtless dis- the varied lyrical treasures of the Elizacover that in other important respects bethan era, as we have received them our writers have the superiority over from the pens of Wither, Sir Henry Continental poets. Wotton, Donne, Cowley, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Robert Ayton, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others. Raleigh was a master in the art of verse, though his superiority in other respects has somewhat detracted from his fame in this. Everybody, however, remembers his reply to Marlowe's song of the "Passionate Shepherd to his Love," beginning Arriving now at a consideration of some of the riches of the English literature as regards this attractive class of poetry, let us first devote a brief space to those writers who flourished before the time of Waller. Much of the best verse issued from the versifiers of the sixteenth century and the earlier portion of the seventeenth. In the lyrics of that period we are struck with the especial beauty and sweetness of many whose authorship is unknown. It speaks well for the popular taste, notwithstanding, that though the authors have long since crumbled into dust, their work has been preserved and handed down from generation to generation. If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. Beyond all dispute, the best of the early lyric poets is Robert Herrick, whose verses are flushed with a joyous and tender spirit. He may be styled the Burns of his time, and imbued with something of Most of these old poems touch upon the reckless soul of our own countryman. the passion of love, and in none has the Herrick was born in Cheapside in the thought been better conveyed than in year 1591, and educated at Cambridge. Ben Jonson's address to Celia, which, In 1629 he became vicar of Dean Prior, familiar as it is, can never be read with-in Devonshire. The time of the Civil out delight : War, however, found him living at West- Nothing could be more delightful than these verses on the daffodils: Fair daffodils, we weep to see But to the even-song; Besides the grace that is inseparable Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, No will-o'-th'-wisp mislight thee, But on, on thy way, Not making a stay, Since ghost there's none to affright thee. Let not the dark thee cumber; The stars of the night, Will lend thee their light Then, Julia, let me woo thee, Thus, thus to come unto me, My soul I'll pour into thee. Her feet beneath her petticoat, As if they feared the light: Her cheeks, so rare a white was on, Who sees them is undone; The side that's next the sun. Her lips were red; and one was thin, We have now glanced sufficiently at this early poetry to apprehend its character by the aid of the examples given. Its great feature is its naturalness. All its similes and its reflections are drawn from outward objects. The close breath of cities does not seem to have tainted the souls of the poets, who revel in flowers, and woods, and meads, which are the springs of laughter, joy, and pathos to them. We now advance a stage, arriving at the minor poets of the Restoration. While not missing a great portion of the sweetness which belonged to their earlier brethren, we find that their prevailing characteristic is sentiment, sometimes degenerating into exaggeration. The age of Charles II. being famous for its gallantry, the courtly poets fill their pages with an extravagant homage to the women of the day. Now and then the adulatory amatory poetry of Lovelace, Montrose, Rochester, and their confrères affects the reader as being what the Americans would describe "high salutin'," and the point of a compliment is The age in which Herrick lived, and in often made absurd by its prodigious unwhich he wrote such verses as these, suitability and extravagance; but in the was distinguished for its poetic excel- verse of this period there still remains the lence, and its indulgence in fancy and genuine ring of song. conceit. Another writer to whom slight hangs his heart upon his sleeve, and reference has been made, George Wither, talks loudly enough about it, it is true. was of the same school as Herrick, and He is more than Cupid's follower; he is almost his equal in tenderness and deli- the little god's very humble slave. There cacy of treatment. Sir John Suckling is a certain lightness of touch in Lovewas also a great master in the art, though lace's ballads that we rarely meet with he is frequently robbed of his true hon- elsewhere, and his lines written to Althea ours. His "Ballad upon a Wedding "from prison are "familiar in our mouths as is one of the most naturally-expressed poems in the language. How these stanzas make us realize the charming being whom he describes!. The cavalier household words." He reaches a loftier strain when he serenely asserts in immortal lines that though immured between stone walls he is nevertheless free. Sed ley, justly famous for his songs, and as justly infamous for his dissolute character, is the author of the charming lyric," Phillis is my only Joy." Buckingham was a man of a lower order of talent than these, and yet through the adventitious aid derived from his position at Court-his pieces spread far and wide, though nobody cares for them now. There is no power in them, though there is sometimes a facile execution. Dryden, it will be remembered, described Buckingham in the character of Zimri as one who In the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. He wrote the fashionable verses of his time from an overweening conceit which would not suffer him to be behind his contemporaries, and never stayed to ask himself whether he possessed the necessary gifts. The Earl of Rochester had a more genuine vein; but one cannot avoid the impression that most of the singers of his time had simply a parrot-like title to fame. Sackville, Earl of Dorset, was stronger than any of those just named, and his stirring ballad, "To all you Ladies now on Land," written the night before an engagement with the Dutch, is as widely known as any of Dibdin's songs. In the navy debates of the House of Commons even in the present year some of its admirable lines were quoted. The effeminacy which so strongly marked the poetry of the time is completely eliminated from this ballad, which possesses both a fine swing and epigrammatic force. Edmund Waller, however, has left behind him a name more durable in connection with this class of poetry than any other man of his century. It is to be hoped he was more constant in his friendships than he was in his politics. Having twanged the lyre, and beautifully too, in praise of Cromwell, he afterwards poured forth congratulatory strains for Charles II. There was no element of greatness in his composition; possessing as much sweetness as Milton, he yet was a perfect contrast to him in all other respects. Compared with the grand old blind poet, he was a rose beside an oak. There was fragrance, but no stability, and he rapidly fell to pieces. Yet even from the dried leaves of the rose, which have been preserved, we can extract pleasant odours. His imagination was not of a striking order, and his verse is more distinguished for its finish than for any other quality; indeed in this respect he has scarcely had an equal since. His "Go, lovely We can hardly assign a place amongst these canary-birds to the satanic muse of Swift. He was a bird of prey in comparison with them, and threw too much of passion and hatred into the most playful of his verses to be ranked with such singers. But what force and command what a mastery of all he touched! We of language, of metre, and of rhyme! prefer for our present purpose to take him in his gentlest mood, and to transcribe a few lines to Stella, which might have been written by a man who had not betrayed another woman. Stella, say, what evil tongue One other name amongst the earlier minor poets must arrest our attention before we come to those of the nineteenth century. In alluding to Matthew Prior, we cannot do better than quote Cowper's words upon our whole subject. "Every man conversant with verse-making knows, and knows by painful experience, that the familiar style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To make verse speak the language of prose without being prosaic, to marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake. He that could accomplish this task was |