Have joined in one a rude uncivil throng,

And by persuasions made that company

An ordered politic society,

When this dumb orator would more persuade,
Than all the speeches Mercury had made.

Called, half against his will, into the region of Court compliment, the poet forced his graceful Muse to the flights of hyperbole and conceit which were expected from her; but his courtly wit is by no means so pleasing as when he pursues his own path of unstudied elegance. The concetti aimed at are not much less extravagant than Donne's. For instance, thinking into what superfine language he can translate the fact that the twentieth anniversary of the King's accession falls on the 24th of March, he writes:

The world to-morrow celebrates with mirth

The joyful peace between the heaven and earth;
To-day let Britain praise that rising light

Whose titles her divided parts unite.

The time since Safety triumphed over Fear
Is now extended to the twentieth year.
Thou happy year, with perfect number blest,
O slide as smooth, as gentle as the rest:
That when the Sun, dispersing from his head
The clouds of Winter on his beauty spread,
Shall see his equinoctial point again,
And melt his dusky mask to fruitful rain,
He may be loth our climate to forsake,
And thence a pattern of such glory take,
That he would leave the zodiac, and desire
To dwell for ever with our northern fire.

This is worthy of Gongora. Prince Charles having left England in the spring of 1624 for his Spanish adventure, and having come back in winter, the poet maintains, as confidently as any pagan pastoral poet might have done, that Nature had in the meanwhile suspended her usual operations :

For want of him we withered in the spring,
But his return shall life in winter bring:

1 I.e. Lady Day.

The plants, which when he went were growing green,
Retain their former liveries to be seen

When he reviews them: his expected eye;

Preserved their beauty, ready oft to die.

And we are to believe that (though history tells us the Spaniards themselves were heartily glad of his departure) the whole course of things in Spain was revolutionised by Charles's return to his native land :—

When he resolves to cross the watery main,

See what a change his absence makes in Spain !
The earth turns gray for grief that she conceives ;
Birds lose their tongues, and trees forsake their leaves.

Beaumont's judgment, in complimentary verse like this, appears very inferior to Drummond's, who, in his Forth Feasting, puts his mythological images into the mouth of the Genius of the River, where they are quite appropriate. On the other hand, we must, in reading them, make allowance for the official exigencies of a Court poet, since it is evident, from the verses addressed by Beaumont to James I., Concerning the True Form of English Poetry, that he had formed an exact and critical conception of the nature of his art :

In every language now in Europe spoke

By nations which the Roman Empire broke,
The relish of the Muse consists in rhyme;
One verse must meet another like a chime.
Our Saxon shortness hath peculiar grace
In choice of words, fit for the ending place :
Which leave impression in the mind as well
As closing sounds of some delightful bell:
These must not be with disproportion lame,
Nor should an echo still repeat the same.
In many changes these may be exprest,
But those that join most simply run the best:
Their form, surpassing far the fettered staves,
Vain care and needless repetition saves.
These outward ashes keep those inward fires,
Whose heat the Greek and Roman work inspires:
Pure phrase, fit epithets, a sober care
Of metaphors, descriptions clear yet rare,
Similitudes contrasted smooth and round,

Not vext by learning, but with nature crown'd;
Strong figures drawn from deep invention's springs,
Consisting less in words and more in things:

A language not affecting ancient times,
Nor Latin shreds by which the pedant climbs :
A noble subject which the mind may lift

To easy use of that peculiar gift,

Which poets in their raptures hold most dear,
When actions by the lively sound appear.
Give me such help, I never will despair,
But that our heads, which suck the freezing air,
As well as hotter brains, may verse adorn,
And be their wonder, as we were their scorn.

A more admirable illustration of the classical spirit naturalised in English verse is not to be found in the range of English poetry. When Beaumont can get free from the entanglements of his Court wit, and expatiate, as he desires, on some res lecta potenter, he approaches more nearly than any poet of his age to the direct vigour of Dryden. His use of the heroic couplet is not indeed best illustrated in the epic style of Bosworth Field, though this contains many strong lines, as in the episode of the king killing the sentinel found asleep on his post :

Then going forth, and finding in his way
A soldier of the watch who sleeping lay,
Enraged to see the wretch neglect his part,
He strikes a sword into his trembling heart;
The hand of death and iron dulness takes
Those leaden eyes which nat'ral ease forsakes:
The king this morning sacrifice commends,
And for example thus the fact defends;
I leave him, as I found him, fit to keep
The silent doors of everlasting Sleep.

But in his Sacred Poems he finds the subject that his genius requires, and several passages in these may rank, for strengh and harmony, with anything in the Religio Laici. For example, he writes Of the Miserable State of

Man:

O Knowledge, if a heaven on earth could be,
I would expect to reap that bliss in thee:
But thou art blind, and they that have thy light
More clearly know they live in darksome night.

See, Man, thy stripes at school, thy pains abroad,
Thy watching and thy paleness well bestowed!
These feeble helps can scholars never bring
To perfect knowledge of the plainest thing:
And some to such a height of learning grow,
They die persuaded that they nothing know.
In vain swift hours, spent in deep study, slide,
Unless the purchas'd doctrine curb our pride.
The soul, persuaded that no fading love
Can equal her embraces, seeks above,
And now aspiring to a higher place,
Is glad that all her comforts here are base.

Of the tears of contrition he says :

With these I wish my vital blood to run,
Ere new eclipses dim this glorious sun;
And yield myself afflicting pains to take
For Thee, my spouse, and only for Thy sake.
Hell could not fright me with immortal fire,
Were it not armed with Thy forsaking ire;
Nor would I look for comfort and delight

In Heaven, if Heaven were shadowed from Thy sight.

And in the same spirit he writes in the time of " Desolation":

If solid virtues dwell not but in pain,

I will not wish that Golden Age again,
Because it flowed with sensible delights

Of heavenly things: God hath created nights,
As well as days, to deck the varied globe;
Grace comes as oft clad in the dusky robe
Of desolation, as in white attire

Which better fits the bright celestial quire.

Some in foul seasons perish through despair,
But more through boldness when the days are fair.
This then must be the med'cine of my woes,

To yield to what my Saviour shall dispose:
To glory in my baseness, to rejoice

In mine afflictions, to obey His voice.

These extracts from Drummond and Beaumont ought to dispose of Waller's claim to have been the first English poet to write smoothly in the heroic couplet.

CHAPTER X

SCHOOLS OF POETICAL "WIT" IN THE REIGN OF

CHARLES I.

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGICAL WIT: FRANCIS QUARLES; GEORGE HERBERT; RICHARD CRASHAW; HENRY VAUGHAN. SCHOOL OF COURT WIT: THOMAS CAREW; SIR JOHN SUCKLING ; ROBERT HERRICK ; WILLIAM HABINGTON ; EDMUND. WALLER; SIR JOHN DENHAM.

WHAT is chiefly noticeable in the poetry of Charles I.'s reign is the sharp opposition between the ideals of the Middle Ages and the ideals of the Renaissance, as represented in the various schools of wit which came into existence in the time of his father. Some of these fashions of metrical expression have indeed almost disappeared. Scarcely any traces remain of the allegory employed by Phineas and Giles Fletcher, as the lineal successors of Spenser, whether this take the form of abstract impersonation in the epic style, or of pastoral dialogue. There is also a tendency to fuse the Metaphysical and Theological schools of wit; the style of George Herbert, in particular, being an extension of the scholastic subtlety of Donne. On the other hand, the Theological school of wit separates itself, more sharply than was the case under James I., from the school of Court wit: its expression of religious thought and feeling is more personal, more monastic, more self-centred ; in the same proportion the tone of Court poetry becomes increasingly worldly, cynical, sometimes even gross and obscene. There are indecent licenses in the verse of Suckling and Carew which Ben Jonson would never have permitted himself to use; while in the lyrics of Herrick,