Alas! in vain! for while (sweet soul) she tries
To measure all those wild diversities

Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, rais'd in a natural tone;
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies.
She dies and leaves her life the victor's prize,
Falling upon his lute. O fit to have,

(That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave.

They

The best compositions of DRUMMOND of Hawthornden are some beautiful sonnets and madrigals. are classical, imaginative, and forcible, yet unequally sustained, and it often occurs that a fine idea is marred by a mean or conceited expression. His language fetters instead of setting free his thoughts. The fire is not wanting, but it is occasionally choked by the very fuel that should support it; the design is lofty, but often obscured by a want of harmony in the detail. These observations might be illustrated better than by the following sonnet, which teems with beauty, and is one of the best specimens of Drummond:

Now while the night her sable veil hath spread,

And silently her resty coach doth roll,

Rousing with her from Tethys' azure bed

Those starry nymphs which dance about the pole

While Cynthia, in purest cypress clad,

The Latmian shepherd in a trance descries,
And looking pale from height of all the skies,
She dyes her beauties in a blushing red.

While sleep, in triumph, closed hath all eyes,
And birds and beasts a silence sweet do keep;
And Proteus' monstrous people in the deep,

The winds and waves hush'd up, to rest entice-
I wake, I turn, I weep, opprest with pain,
Perplex'd in the meanders of my brain.

CAREW, who wrote songs of gallantry, yet not free from licentiousness; LOVELACE, tender and elegant, yet conceited; SUCKLING, florid and epigrammatic, and DAVENANT, often fanciful and brilliant, were the poets of the court of Charles the First. The lines of the last, addressed to that monarch's queen, Henrietta Matilda, are full of the polish, expression, and refinement of Pope. He calls her

Fair as unshaded light; or as the day

In its first birth, when all the year was May;
Sweet, as the altar's smoke, or as the new
Unfolded bud, swell'd by the early dew;
Smooth, as the face of waters first appear'd,
'Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard:

Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far

Than in their sleep forgiven hermits are.*

The following little piece by Carew, entitled Red and White Roses, is in his liveliest style:

Read in these roses the sad story

Of my hard fate, and your own glory :
In the white you may discover
The paleness of a fainting lover;

In the red, the flames still feeding

On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding.
The white will tell you how I languish,

And the red express my anguish :

*Pope has imitated some of these lines in his Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard. The life of the recluse lover is represented to be

Still as the seas, 'ere winds were taught to blow,

Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;

Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiven,

And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heaven,

The white my innocence displaying,

The red my martyrdom betraying.
The frowns that on your brow resided,
Have those roses thus divided ;

Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather,

And then they both shall grow together.

The best production of Suckling is a ballad on a wedding, told by a countryman on his return from London; it is easy, flowing, and happy, and so full of rustic humor, that one might imagine a crowd of villagers listening with open mouths and half incredulous air to the wonders of the narrator. His Sessions of the Poets is a humorous little satire; and the poem 'To a Lady on her going out of England' (of which the following lines form the commencement) is very expressive and poetical:

I must confess, when I did part from you,
I could not force an artificial dew
Upon my cheeks, nor with a gilded phrase
Express how many hundred several ways
My heart was tortur'd, nor with arms across
In discontented garbs set forth my loss:
Such loud expressions many times do come
From lightest hearts, great griefs are always dumb;
The shallow rivers roar, the deep are still;

Numbers of painted words may shew much skill;
But little anguish and a cloudy face

Is oft put on, to serve both time and place.

The spirit of party and religious zeal which distressed the country during the troubled reign of the first Charles, as it operated on the manners, affected no less the literature of the period. Wit, brilliancy, and fancy

filled the court, and songs of compliment and gallantry were cherished by the loyalists. They honored whatever was elegant and refined in their day; and however lax in principle or wanting in morality, they loved those lighter arts which are the ornaments of society, and which, if they cannot improve its character, can at least gild its surface. The very conceits of the period flowed from a refinement of fashion, hollow indeed, but for the time attractive; and served as so many proofs of the genius of their admirers. Learning was not disregarded, but it threw off the guise of pedantry. New channels of information had long since been open to mankind; and a tone of easy elegance was established, alluring to all within the influence of its charms.

But there was a deeper and sterner feeling operating upon another class. A spirit of reflection had arisen in the community-the late reformation in religion had taught men to canvass subjects never before questioned— from the discussion of sacred they turned to political matters, and carried to them the zeal and dogmas of puritanism. They were generally unlearned but sincere : confounding abstract truths with prejudices, forgetting the circumstances by which they were surrounded, soured with opposition or neglect, they formed lofty but crude notions of their rights, and, contrasting them with their condition, they became restless and gloomy, severe and determined. The dogmatic spirit, which at first prompted, afterwards fostered this tone of mind, until it

F

swelled into enthusiasm; and its votaries became no less political than spiritual devotees.

The poetry of such a race must have been marked by its prevailing features: by imagination, when once aroused, bold and grasping; by striking and original thoughts; by language energetic and decisive; and over all their truths and errors, alike glaring and profound, by the glow of enthusiasm falling, not softly like sunlight through the tracery of stained windows, but streaming with the fresh vehemence of a summer noon, as it bursts over some rude pile of rocks, and throws a halo round their ruggedness.

It was from such a people, free from their worst prejudices, enlightened by their best spirit, with a zeal and imagination flushed by the genius of the times, that Milton arose. In power, beauty, and sublimity, he has been compared to Homer,-" Shakspeare alone excelled them both; but he went beyond all men, and stands in the array of human intellect, like the sun in the system, single and unapproachable."*

* Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, page 58.