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The royal maid th' applause disdains

Europa among the Flowers.

In a note to Moschus, Stanley translates the following from Marini, in which the Italian poet imitates the second idyll of Moschus.

Along the mead Europa walks,

To choose the fairest of its gems,
Which, plucking from their slender stalks,
She weaves in fragrant diadems.

Where'er the beauteous virgin treads,
The common people of the field,
To kiss her feet bowing their heads,
Homage as to their goddess yield.

'Twixt whom ambitious wars arise, Which to the queen shall first present A gift Arabian spice outvies,

The votive offering of their scent,

When deathless Amaranth, this strife,
Greedy by dying to decide,
Begs she would her green thread of life,
As love's fair destiny, divide.

Pliant Acanthus now the vine

And ivy enviously beholds, Wishing her odorous arms might twine About this fair in such strict folds.

The Violet, by her foot oppressed,

Doth from that touch enamoured rise, But, losing straight what made her blest, Hangs down her head, looks pale, and dies.

Clitia, to new devotion won,

Doth now her former faith deny,
Sees in her face a double sun,
And glories in apostacy.

The Gillyflower, which mocks the skies—
The meadow's painted rainbow-seeks

A brighter lustre from her eyes,

A richer scarlet from her cheeks.

The jocund Flower-de-luce appears,
Because neglected, discontent;
The morning furnished her with tears;
Her sighs expiring odours vent.

Narcissus in her eyes, once more,

Seems his own beauty to admire ;
In water not so clear before,
As represented now in fire.

The Crocus, who would gladly claim
A privilege above the rest,
Begs with his triple tongue of flame,
To be transplanted to her breast.
The Hyacinth, in whose pale leaves

The hand of Nature writ his fate, With a glad smile his sigh deceives, In hopes to be more fortunate.

His head the drowsy Poppy raised,

Awaked by this approaching morn, And viewed her purple light amazed, Though his, alas! was but her scorn.

None of this aromatic crowd,

But for their kind death humbly call, Courting her hand, like martyrs proud, By so divine a fate to fall.

Of vulgar flowers, and only chose

The bashful glory of the plains,

Sweet daughter of the Spring, the Rose.

She, like herself, a queen appears, Raised on a verdant thorny throne, Guarded by amorous winds, and wears A purple robe, a golden crown.

SIR JOHN DENHAM.

SIR JOHN DENHAM (1615-1668) was the son of the chief-baron of exchequer in Ireland, and was born at Dublin, but educated at Oxford, then the chief resort of all the poetical and high-spirited cavaliers. Denham was wild and dissolute in his youth, and squandered great part of his patrimony at the gaming-table. He was made governor of Farnham Castle by Charles I.; and after the monarch had been delivered into the hands of the army, his secret correspondence was partly carried on by Denham, who was furnished with nine several ciphers for the purpose. Charles had a respect for literature as well as the arts; and Milton records of him that he made Shakspeare's plays the closet-companion of his solitude. It would appear, however, that the king wished to keep poetry apart from state affairs; for he told Denham, on seeing one of his pieces, 'that when men are young, and have little else to do, they may vent the overflowings of their fancy in that way; but when they are thought fit for more serious employments, if they still persisted in that course, it looked as if they minded not the way to any better.' The poet stood corrected, and bridled in his muse. In 1639, he succeeded to his father's estate, and returned again to the gaming-table. In 1648, he was employed to convey the Duke of York to France, and resided in that country some time. His estate was sold by the Long Parliament; but the Restoration revived his fallen dignity and fortunes. He was made surveyor of the king's buildings, and a Knight of the Bath. In domestic life, the poet does not seem to have been happy. He had freed himself from his early excesses and follies, but an unfortunate marriage darkened his closing years, which were unhappily visited by insanity. He recovered, to receive the congratulations of Butler, his fellow-poet, and to commemorate the death of Cowley in one of his happiest effusions.

Cooper's Hill, the poem by which Denham is now best known, was first published in 1642, but afterwards corrected and enlarged. It consists of between three and four hundred lines, written in the heroic couplet. The descriptions are interspersed with sentimental digressions, suggested by the objects around-the river Thames, a ruined abbey, Windsor Forest, and the field of Runnymede. The view from Cooper's Hill is rich and luxuriant, but the muse of Denham was more reflective than descriptive. Dr Johnson assigns to this poet the praise of being the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation.' Ben Jonson's fine poem on Penshurst may dispute the palm of originality

on this point with Cooper's Hill, but Jonson could not have written with such correctness, nor with such pointed expression, as Denham. The versification of this poet is generally smooth and flowing, but he had no pretensions to the genius of Cowley, or to the depth and delicacy of feeling possessed by the old dramatists, or the poets of the Elizabethan period. He reasoned fluently in verse, without glaring faults of style, and hence obtained the approbation of Johnson far above his deserts. Denham could not, like his contemporary, Chamberlayne, have described the beauty of a summer morning:

The Morning hath not lost her virgin blush;

Nor step, but mine, soiled the earth's tinselled robe.

How full of heaven this solitude appears,
This healthful comfort of the happy swain;
Who from his hard but peaceful bed roused up,
In's morning exercise saluted is

By a full quire of feathered choristers,
Wedding their notes to the enamoured air!

Here Nature in her unaffected dress

Plaited with valleys, and embossed with hills

Enchased with silver streams, and fringed with woods,

Sits lovely in her native russet.*

Chamberlayne is comparatively unknown, and has never been included in any edition of the poets, yet every reader of taste or sensibility must feel that the above picture far transcends the cold sketches of Denham, and is imbued with a poetical spirit to which he was a stranger. 'That Sir John Denham began a reformation in our verse,' says Southey, 'is one of the most groundless assertions that ever obtained belief in literature. More thought and more skill had been exercised before his time in the construction of English metre, than he ever bestowed on the subject, and by men of far greater attainments and far higher powers. To improve, indeed, either upon the versification or the diction of our great writers, was impossible; it was impossible to exceed them in the knowledge or in the practice of their art, but it was easy to avoid the more obvious faults of inferior authors: and in this way he succeeded, just so far as not to be included in

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease; nor consigned to oblivion with the "persons of quality" who contributed their vapid effusions to the miscellanies of those days. His proper place is among those of his contemporaries and successors who called themselves wits, and have since been entitled poets by the courtesy of England.' + Denham, nevertheless, deserves a place in English literature, though not that high one which has heretofore been assigned to him. The traveller who crosses the Alps or Pyrenees, finds pleasure in the contrast afforded by level plains and calm streams; and so Denham's correctness pleases, after the wild imaginations and irregular harmony of the greater masters of the lyre who preceded him. In reading him, we feel that we descending into a different scene-the romance is over, and we must be content with smoothness, regularity, and order.

Chamberlayne's Love's Victory. ↑ Southey's Life of Cowper.

are

The Thames and Windsor Forest.—From 'Cooper's Hill!'
My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays;
Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sons
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,

Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold,
His genuine and less guilty wealth to explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for th' ensuing spring,
And then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay ;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil

The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil,
But Godlike his unwearied bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confined,
But free and common, as the sea or wind.
When he to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Visits the world, and in his flying towers
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours:
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants,
Cities in deserts, woods in cities plants;
So that to us no thing, no place is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's Exchange.
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;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is placed,
Between the mountain and the stream embraced,
Which shade and shelter from the hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives;
And in the mixture of all these appears
Variety, which all the rest endears.

This scene had some bold Greek or British bard
Beheld of old, what stories had we heard

Of fairies, satyrs, and the nymphs their dames,
Their feasts, their revels, and their amorous flames!
'Tis still the same, although their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.

The four lines printed in italics have been praised by every critic from Dryden to the present day.

The Reformation-Monks and Puritans. Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise, But my fixed thoughts my wandering eye betrays. Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late A chapel crowned, till in the common fate Th' adjoining abbey fell. May no such storm Fall on our times, where ruin must reform ! Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous dire offence, What crime could any Christian king incense To such a rage? Was 't luxury or lust? Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just?

Were these their crimes? They were his own much

more;

But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor, Who having spent the treasures of his crown, Condemns their luxury to feed his own.

And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
No crime so bold, but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good.
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils :
But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.
And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell,
In empty, airy contemplation dwell;

And like the block unmoved lay; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temperate region can be known,
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture?

Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance,
And rather in the dark to grope our way,
Than, led by a false guide, to err by day?

Denham had just and enlightened notions of the duty of a translator. 'It is not his business alone,' he says, 'to translate language into language, but poesy into poesy; and poesy is so subtle a spirit, that, in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the translation, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum; there being certain graces and happinesses peculiar to every language, which give life and energy to the words.' Hence, in his poetical address to Sir Richard Fanshawe, on his translation of Pastor Fido, our poet says:

On Poetical Translations.

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
Those are the laboured births of slavish brains,
Not the effect of poetry, but pains.
Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations and translators too.
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

The last two lines are very happily conceived and expressed. Denham wrote a tragedy, the Sophy, which is but a tame commonplace plot of Turkish jealousy, treachery, and murder. Occasionally, there is a vigorous thought or line, as when the envious king asks Haly:

Have not I performed actions As great, and with as great a moderation?

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On Mr Abraham Cowley.

His Death and Burial amongst the Ancient Poets.

Old Chaucer, like the morning-star,
To us discovers day from far.

His light those mists and clouds dissolved
Which our dark nation long involved;
But he, descending to the shades,
Darkness again the age invades ;
Next (like Aurora) Spenser rose,
Whose purple blush the day foreshews;
The other three with his own fires
Phoebus, the poet's god, inspires:
By Shakspeare's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines,
Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines.
These poets near our princes sleep,
And in one grave their mansion keep.
They lived to see so many days,

Till time had blasted all their bays;
But cursed be the fatal hour

That plucked the fairest, sweetest flower
That in the Muses' garden grew,

And amongst withered laurels threw.
Time, which made them their fame outlive,
To Cowley scarce did ripeness give.
Old mother-wit and nature gave
Shakspeare and Fletcher all they have:
In Spenser and in Jonson, art
Of slower nature got the start;
But both in him so equal are,

None knows which bears the happiest share.
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own;
He melted not the ancient gold,
Nor with Ben Jonson did make bold
To plunder all the Roman stores
Of poets and of orators:

Horace his wit and Virgil's state
He did not steal, but emulate;
And when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear:
He not from Rome alone, but Greece,
Like Jason brought the golden fleece;
To him that language-though to none
Of th' others as his own was known.
On a stiff gale, as Flaccus sings,
The Theban swan extends his wings,
When through th' ethereal clouds he flies
To the same pitch our swan doth rise;
Old Pindar's heights by him are reached,
When on that gale his wings are stretched;
His fancy and his judgment such,
Each to th' other seemed too much;
His severe judgment giving law,
His modest fancy kept in awe.

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Nature, alas! why art thou so
Obliged to thy greatest foe?
Sleep, that is thy best repast,
Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE,

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE (1619-1689) describes himself in the title-page to his works as 'of Shaftesbury, in the county of Dorset.' The poet practised as a physician at Shaftesbury; but he appears to have wielded the sword as well as the lancet, for he was present among the royalists at the battle of Newbury. His circumstances must have been far from flourishing, as, like Vaughan, he complains keenly of the poverty of poets, and states that he was debarred from the society of the wits of his day. The works of Chamberlayne consist of two poems-Love's Victory, a tragi-comedy, published in 1658; and Pharonnida, a Heroic Poem, published in 1659. The scene of the first is laid in Sicily; and that of Pharonnida is also partly in Sicily, but chiefly in Greece. With no court connection, no light or witty copies of verses to float him into popularity, relying solely on his two long and comparatively unattractive worksto appreciate which, through all the windings of romantic love, plots, escapes, and adventures, more time is required than the author's busy age could afford-we need hardly wonder that Chamberlayne was an unsuccessful poet. His works were almost totally forgotten, till Campbell, in his Specimens of the Poets, in 1819, by quoting largely from Pharonnida, and pointing out the 'rich breadth and variety of its scenes,' and the power and pathos of its characters and situations, drew attention to the passion, imagery, purity of sentiment, and tenderness of description, which lay, 'like metals in the mine,' in the neglected volume of Chamberlayne. We cannot, however, suppose that the works of this poet can ever be popular; his beauties are marred by infelicity of execution; though not deficient in the genius of a poet, he had little of the skill of the artist. The heroic couplet then wandered at will, sometimes into a 'wilderness of sweets,' but at other times into tediousness, mannerism, and absurdity. The sense was not compressed by the form of the verse, or by any correct rules of metrical harmony. Chamberlayne also laboured under the disadvantage of his story being long and intricate, and his style such-from the prolonged tenderness and pathos of his scenes-as could not be appreciated except on a careful and attentive perusal. Denham was patent to all-short, sententious, and perspicuous.

The dissatisfaction of the poet with his obscure and neglected situation, depressed by poverty, breaks out in the following passage, descriptive of a rich simpleton:

How purblind is the world, that such a monster,
In a few dirty acres swaddled, must
Be mounted, in Opinion's empty scale,
Above the noblest virtues that adorn

Souls that make worth their centre, and to that
Draw all the lines of action! Worn with age,
The noble soldier sits, whilst, in his cell,
The scholar stews his catholic brains for food.
The traveller returned, and poor may go
A second pilgrimage to farmers' doors, or end
His journey in an hospital; few being
So generous to relieve, where virtue doth
Necessitate to crave. Harsh poverty,
That moth, which frets the sacred robe of wit,
Thousands of noble spirits blunts, that else

Had spun rich threads of fancy from the brain : But they are souls too much sublimed to thrive. The following description of a dream is finely executed, and seems to have suggested, or at least bears a close resemblance to, the splendid opening lines of Dryden's Religio Laici:

A Prophetic Dream.

A strong prophetic dream,
Diverting by enigmas nature's stream,
Long hovering through the portals of her mind
On vain fantastic wings, at length did find
The glimmerings of obstructed reason, by
A brighter beam of pure divinity
Led into supernatural light, whose rays
As much transcended reason's, as the day's
Dull mortal fires, faith apprehends to be
Beneath the glimmerings of divinity.
Her unimprisoned soul, disrobed of all
Terrestrial thoughts-like its original
In heaven, pure and immaculate-a fit
Companion for those bright angels' wit
Which the gods made their messengers, to bear
This sacred truth, seeming transported where,
Fixed in the flaming centre of the world,
The heart o' the microcosm, about which is hurled
The spangled curtains of the sky, within
Whose boundless orbs the circling planets spin
Those threads of time upon whose strength rely
The ponderous burdens of mortality.

An adamantine world she sees, more pure,
More glorious far than this-framed to endure
The shock of doomsday's darts.

Chamberlayne, like Milton and the earlier poets, was fond of describing the charms of morning. We have copied one passage in the previous notice of Denham; and numerous brief sketches are interspersed throughout Chamberlayne's works. For example:

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When lowly swains, knowing no parent's voice
A negative, make a free happy choice.'
And here she sighed; then with some drops, distilled
From Love's most sovereign elixir, filled
The crystal fountains of her eyes, which, ere
Dropped down, she thus recalls again: 'But ne'er,
Ne'er, my Argalia, shall these fears destroy
My hopes of thee: Heaven! let me but enjoy
So much of all those blessings, which their birth
Can take from frail mortality; and Earth,
Contracting all her curses, cannot make
A storm of danger loud enough to shake
Me to a trembling penitence; a curse,
To make the horror of my suffering worse,
Sent in a father's name, like vengeance fell
From angry Heaven, upon my head may dwell
In an eternal stain-my honoured name
With pale disgrace may languish-busy fame
My reputation spot-affection be

Termed uncommanded lust-sharp poverty,
That weed that kills the gentle flower of love,
As the result of all these ills, may prove
My greatest misery-unless to find
Myself unpitied. Yet not so unkind
Would I esteem this mercenary band,

As those far more malignant powers that stand,
Armed with dissuasions, to obstruct the way
Fancy directs; but let those souls obey
Their harsh commands, that stand in fear to shed
Repentant tears: I am resolved to tread
Those doubtful paths, through all the shades of fear
That now benights them. Love! with pity hear
Thy suppliant's prayer, and when my clouded eyes
Shall cease to weep, in smiles I'll sacrifice
To thee such offerings, that the utmost date
Of Death's rough hands shall never violate.'

EDMUND WALLER.

EDMUND WALLER (1605-1687) was a courtly and amatory poet. His poems have all the smoothness and polish of modern verse, and hence a high, perhaps too high, rank has been claimed for him as one of the first refiners and improvers of poetical diction. One cause of Waller's refinement was doubtless his early and familiar intercourse with the court and nobility. He wrote for the world of fashion and of taste consigning

The noon of manhood to a myrtle shadeand he wrote in the same strain till he was upwards of fourscore! His life has more romance than his poetry. Waller was born at Coleshill, in Hertfordshire, and in his infancy was left heir to an estate of £3500 per annum. His mother was of the Hampdens of Buckinghamshire, and the poet was cousin to the patriot Hampden, and also related to Oliver Cromwell. His mother was a royalist in feeling, and used to lecture Cromwell for his share in the death of Charles I. Her son, the poet, was either a Roundhead or a royalist, as the time served. He entered parliament and wrote his first poem when he was eighteen. At twenty-five, he married a rich heiress of London, who died the same year, and the poet immediately became a suitor of Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester. To this proud and peerless fair one, Waller dedicated the better portion of his poetry, and the groves of Penshurst echoed to the praises of his Sacharissa. Lady Dorothea, however, was inexorable, and bestowed her hand, in her twenty-second year, on the Earl

of Sunderland. It is said that, meeting her long afterwards, when she was far advanced in years, the lady asked him when he would again write such verses upon her. 'When you are as young, madam, and as handsome, as you were then,' replied the ungallant poet. The incident affords a key to Waller's character. He was easy, witty, and accomplished, but cold and selfish; destitute alike of high principle and deep feeling. As a member of parliament, Waller distinguished himself on the popular side, and was chosen to conduct the prosecution against Judge Crawley for his opinion in favour of levying ship-money. His speech, on delivering the impeachment, was printed, and 20,000 copies of it sold in one day. Shortly afterwards, however, Waller joined in a plot to surprise the city militia, and let in the king's forces, for which he was tried and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £10,000. His conduct on this occasion was mean and abject. At the expiration of his imprisonment, the poet went abroad, and resided, amidst much splendour and hospitality, in France. He returned during the Protectorate, and when Cromwell died, Waller celebrated the event in one of his most vigorous and impressive poems. The image of the Commonwealth, though reared by no common hands, soon fell to pieces under Richard Cromwell, and Waller was ready with a congratulatory address to Charles II. The royal offering was considered inferior to the Panegyric on Cromwell, and the king himself-who admitted the poet to terms of courtly intimacy-is said to have told him of the disparity. Poets, sire,' replied the witty, self-possessed Waller,succeed better in fiction than in truth.' In the first parliament summoned by Charles, Waller sat for the town of Hastings, and he served for different places in all the parliaments of that reign. Bishop Burnet says he was the delight of the House of Commons. At the accession of James II. in 1685, the venerable poet, then eighty years of age, was elected representative for a borough in Cornwall. The mad career of James, in seeking to subvert the national church and constitution, was foreseen by this wary and sagacious observer: 'He will be left,' said he, 'like a whale upon the strand.' The editors of Chandler's Debates and the Parliamentary History ascribe to Waller a remarkable speech against standing armies, delivered in the House of Commons in 1685; but according to Lord Macaulay, this speech was really made by Windham, member for Salisbury. It was with some concern,' adds the historian, 'that I found myself forced to give up the belief that the last words uttered in public by Waller were so honourable to him.' Feeling his long-protracted life drawing to a close, Waller purchased a small property at Coleshill, saying: He would be glad to die like the stag, where he was roused.' The wish was not fulfilled; he died at Beaconsfield, on the 21st of October 1687; and in the churchyard of that place-where also rest the ashes of Edmund Burke-a monument has been erected to his memory.

The first collection of Waller's poems was made by himself, and published in the year 1664. It went through numerous editions in his lifetime; and in 1690 a second collection was made of such pieces as he had produced in his latter years. In a poetical dedication to Lady Harley, prefixed to

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