of a striking metaphor, however violent or eccentric. But the distinction of this French school of poetry is certainly not that it altogether eschews conceits and false thoughts: on the contrary, it is decidedly addicted to what is brilliant in preference to what is true and deep, and its system of composition is essentially one of point and artifice; but all this is still to a certain extent in subordination to the principles and laws of good writing; the conceit is always reduced at least to fair rhetorical sound and shape; it is not made alone the substitute for every other attraction, the apology and compensation for every other vice of style, the prime ingredient and almost only thing needful in the composition; when the thought is false and absurd it is not tortured into still greater absurdity and grotesqueness by the perpetration of all sorts of violence upon the words. There is more quaintness, however, in the poetry of Lovelace than in that of Carew. The poems of Colonel Richard Lovelace are contained in two small volumes, one entitled Lucasta, published in 1649; the other entitled Posthume Poems, published by his brother in 1659, the year after the author's death.* They consist principally of songs and other short pieces. Lovelace's songs, which are mostly amatory, are many of them carelessly enough written, and there are very few of them not defaced by some harshness or deformity; but a few of his best pieces are as sweetly versified as Carew's, with perhaps greater variety of fancy as well as more of vital force; and a tone of chivalrous gentleness and honour gives to some of them a pathos beyond the reach of any mere poetic art. He has written nothing else, however, nearly so exquisite as his well-known lines to Althea in prison; and therefore, familiar as that song is likely to be to most of our readers, it would be unfair to substitute any other specimen of his poetry: When love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye; The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. * Reprints of both have been produced by Mr. Singer; 12mo. Chiswick, 1817, and 1818. 1 Misprinted" Gods" in the original edition. VOL. II. с When flowing cups run swiftly round, Our careless heads with roses bound, When, like committed linnets, I Stone walls do not a prison make, That for an hermitage: And in my soul am free, Scattered over Lovelace's poetry are a good many single expressions struck out by a true poetical feeling. Campbell has borrowed from him the line in his Dream of the Exile, "The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;" which in Lovelace is, in one of his addresses to Lucasta, "Like to the sentinel stars, I watch all night." Lovelace's days, darkened in their close by the loss of everything except honour, were cut short at the age of forty; his contemporary, Sir John Suckling, who moved gaily and thoughtlessly through his short life as through a dance or a merry game, " died, in 1641, at that of thirty-two. Suckling, who is the author of a small collection of poems, as well as of four plays, has none of the pathos of Lovelace or Carew, but he equals them in fluency and natural grace of manner, and he has besides a sprightliness and buoyancy which is all his own. His poetry has a more impulsive air than theirs; and, while, in reference to the greater part of what he has produced, he must be classed along with them and Waller as an adherent to the French school of propriety and precision, some of the happiest of his effusions are remarkable for a cordiality and impetuosity of manner which has nothing foreign about it, but is altogether English, although there is not much resembling it in any of his predecessors any more than of his contemporaries, unless perhaps in some of Skelton's pieces. His famous ballad of The Wedding is the very perfection of gaiety and archness in verse; and his Session of the Poets, in which he scatters about his wit and humour in a more careless style, may be considered as constituting him the founder of a species of satire, which Cleveland and Marvel and other subsequent writers carried into new applications, and which only expired among us with Swift. We cannot but give the Ballad, often as it has been printed. The subject is the marriage of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill (afterwards Earl of Orrery), with the Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk; and the reader will admire the art with which grace and even poetry of expression is preserved throughout along with the forms of speech, as well as of thought, natural to the rustic narrator : I tell thee, Dick, where I have been, At Charing Cross, hard by the way There is a house with stairs: And there did I see coming down Amongst the rest, one pestilent fine Our landlord looks like nothing to him; At course-a-park, withouten doubt, He should have first been taken out 1 The present Northumberland House, then called Suffolk House, the scat of the lady's father. No Could ever yet produce; grape that's lusty ripe could be Her finger was so small, the ring And to say truth (for out it must) Her feet beneath her petticoat But oh! she dances such a way No sun upon an Easter day1 Is half so fine a sight. He would have kissed her once or twice, But she would not, she was so nice, She would not do 't in sight; And then she looked as who should say, I will do what I list to day, And you shall do 't at night. Her cheeks so rare a white was on, Who sees them is undone; For streaks of red were mingled there The side that 's next the sun. 1 It was formerly believed that the sun danced on Easter-day. See Brand, Popular Antiquities (edit. of 1841), i. 95; where the present verse is strangely quoted in illustration of this popular notion from "a rare book entitled Recreation for Ingenious Head Pieces, &c., 8vo. Lon. 1667." Her lips were red, and one was thin But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face, Than on the sun in July. Her mouth so small when she does speak, Thou 'dst swear her teeth her words did break That they might passage get: But she so handled still the matter, They came as good as ours, or better, Passion o' me! how I run on! There's that that would be thought upon, The business of the kitchen's great, For it is fit that men should eat, Just in the nick the cook knocked thrice, His summons did obey; Each serving-man with dish in hand When all the meat was on the table, What man of knife, or teeth, was able And this the very reason was, Now hats fly off, and youths carouse; And, when 'twas named another's health, O' the sudden up they rise and dance; Then dance again and kiss: |