And therefore post themselves in bogs, The water-rat, their strict ally. For 'tis not now, who's stout and bold? That triumphed o'er the British Sea; DETACHED PASSAGES FROM HUDIBRAS. He knew what's what, and that's as high Ah me! what perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron. In all the trade of war, no feat For what is worth in anything But so much money as 'twill bring? 1 Homer's Frog and Mouse War. "Water-rat," the Dutch. 2 See Suetonius, Calig. 46. 8 There is a couplet usually said to be in Hudibras He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day. No such lines are in the poem: they occur in an old volume of Apophthegms translated by Nicholas Udal from Erasmus, and published in 1542: "That same man, that rennith awaie, Maie again fight another daie." DETACHED PIECES. Doubtless the pleasure is as great He that complies against his will 229 HENRY VAUGHAN. (1614-1695.) HENRY VAUGHAN, a quaint, but earnest, and, at times, beautiful religious poet, was a native of Brecknockshire. He studied the law, but afterwards adopted the medical profession. His poems were first published in 1651. 66 Still young and fine, but what is still in view We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new. For thy new light, and trembled at each shower! ON THE DEATH OF FRIENDS. They are all gone into the world of light! Their very memory is fair and bright, He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown. 1 This expression has been repeated by Campbell in his verses on the Rainbow. SIR JOHN DENHAM. DENHAM has been praised as a great improver and refiner of English verse. He wrote the heroic couplet with correctness and smoothness, but this had previously been done by Drummond of Hawthornden, Beaumont, and others, who possessed far higher powers of thought and imagination. Denham, however, was a pleasing descriptive poet, and his "Cooper's Hill" (first published in 1642) was a popular tribute to the fine scenery and historical associations of the river Thames. THE THAMES. My eye, descending from the hill, surveys, By his old sire, to his embraces runs, Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea, Like mortal life to meet eternity. Though with those streams he no remembrance hold The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil, First loves to do, then loves the good he does. But free or common as the sea or wind; Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours: So that to us no thing, no place is strange, O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; LOVELACE. 231 RICHARD LOVELACE. (1618-1658.) The cavalier poets of the early part of the seventeenth century have often considerable richness of poetic diction and melody of versification. Their minor poems are carefully finished, though extravagant in sentiment and disfigured by conceits. Lovelace was the son of a royalist knight; he spent his fortune, fought, and suffered imprisonment in the cause of Charles I., and at length died in great poverty in London. In 1649 he published "Lucasta, Ödes, Sonnets, Songs, etc." TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON. When love, with unconfinéd wings, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at my grates; When flowing cups run swiftly round Our careless heads with roses crown'd, When healths and draughts go free, Fishes that tipple in the deep When, linnet-like confinéd, I With shriller notes shall sing The mercy, sweetness, majesty, When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, The enlarged winds, that curl the flood, Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. COWLEY. (1618-1667.) IN the period of his reputation, Cowley, as well as Butler, precedes Milton; he died in the year of the publication of Paradise Lost. He was the son of a stationer in Cheapside, London, who by will left £140 to each of his six children, and the same sum to the then unborn poet. In 1636 he was enabled to enter the university of Cambridge. The perusal of Spenser's Fairy Queen in his childhood, he says himself, made him irrecoverably a poet. At the age of fifteen he published a volume of pieces, containing "Pyramus and Thisbe," written when he was ten years old, and "Constantia and Philetus," composed two years afterwards; both are productions of wonderful precocity. After the commencement of the civil war, he was ejected from Cambridge by the Parliamentary visitors; he sheltered himself amid the loyalty of Oxford. On the surrender of that city to the Parliament, he joined the court of the exiled queen in France, and was for several years employed as a confidential secretary, and in the execution of his office had the important and laborious duty of deciphering the correspondence of that princess with her husband and his party in England. Cowley returned to England in 1656, with the view, it has been said, of rendering himself useful to the exiled king; he was discovered and seized, but was ultimately released. He assumed the apparent profession of a physician, and procured from the university of Oxford the degree of M. D. This circumstance gave rise to his Latin work on Plants, in six books, partly in elegiac, partly in heroic verse. At the Restoration, Cowley found himself, like many others whose services and sacrifices for the king had been great, neglected and unrewarded. Ultimately, however, by the kindness of powerful friends, he obtained a favourable lease of some of the queen's lands, and had before him the prospect of retirement, which he ardently desired, and of a competence equal to his unambitious wants. His solitude appears not to have yielded him the satisfaction he expected. He died at his house in Chertsey, in 1667, of a disease of the lungs caught in consequence of a neglected cold. He was interred with great magnificence in Westminster, between Spenser and Chaucer. King Charles pronounced, "that Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England." Cowley's countenance and deportment were sweet and amiable, a real index of his mind; in his manners and person there was nothing singular or affected; he had the modesty of a man of genius and the humility of a Christian." 66 His poetical works consist of Miscellanies, many of the pieces being composed in his early youth; Epistles, Elegies, etc.; the Mistress, a collection of love poems; translations of Pindaric Odes; Odes in the style of Pindar (imitations of these compositions became a rage for half a century after): the Latin books "of Plants;" Anacreontics; and the Davideis, a heroic poem in rhyming couplets, which was to have been in twelve books, but the poet completed only four: the greater portion was composed while he was at the university. The Davideis evinces learning, but is heavy, and loaded with the ornaments of a false taste. |