Not a few of his other sonnets are also worth reading, and the unpromising subject of Doomsday (which connects itself in style partly with Spenser, but perhaps still more with The Mirror for Magistrates), does not prevent it from containing fine passages. Alexander had indeed more power of sustained versification than his friend Drummond, though he hardly touches the latter in point of the poetical merit of short isolated passages and poems. Both bear perhaps a little too distinctly the complexion of "Gentlemen of the Press "-men who are composing poems because it is the fashion, and because their education, leisure, and elegant tastes lead them to prefer that form of occupation. But perhaps what is most interesting about them is the way in which they reproduce on a smaller scale the phenomenon presented by the Scotch poetical school of the fifteenth century. That school, as is well known, was a direct offshoot from, or following of the school of Chaucer, though in Dunbar at least it succeeded in producing work almost, if not quite, original in form. In the same way, Drummond and Alexander, while able to the full to experience directly the foreign, and especially Italian influences which had been so strong on the Elizabethans, were still in the main followers of the Elizabethans themselves, and formed, as it were, a Scottish moon to the English sun of poetry. There is little or nothing that is distinctively national about them, though in their following of the English model they show talent at least equal to all but the best of the school they followed. But this fact, joined to those above noted, helps, no doubt, to give an air of want of spontaneity to their verse—an air as of the literary exercise.

There are other writers who might indifferently come in this chapter or in that on Caroline poetry, for the reign of James was as much overlapped in this respect by his son's as by Elizabeth's, and there are others who need but slight notice, besides yet others a great multitude-who can receive no notice at all, The doggerel of Taylor, the water poet (not a bad prose writer), received both patronage and attention, which seem to have annoyed

his betters, and he has been resuscitated even in our own times. Francis Beaumont, the coadjutor of Fletcher, has left independent poetical work which, on the whole, confirms the general theory that the chief execution of the joint plays must have been his partner's, but which (as in the Letter to Ben Jonson and the fine stoicism of The Honest Man's Fortune) contains some very good things. His cousin, Sir John Beaumont, who died not so young as Francis, but at the comparatively early age of forty-six, was the author of a historical poem on Bosworth Field, which is not of the meanest, as well as of minor pieces not numerous, but of higher merit than The Field. Two famous poems, which every one knows by heart, the "You Meaner Beauties of the Night" of Sir Henry Wotton and the "Tell Me no more how fair She is " of Bishop Henry King, are merely perfect examples of a style of verse which was largely if not often quite so perfectly practised by lesser or less known men, as well as by greater ones.1

There is, moreover, a class of verse which has been referred to incidentally before, and which may very likely be referred to incidentally again, but which is too abundant, too characteristic, and too charming not to merit a place, if no very large one, to itself. I refer to the delightful songs which are scattered all over the plays of the period, from Greene to Shirley. As far as Shakespere is concerned, these songs are well enough known, and Mr. Palgrave's Treasury, and such books as Bell's Songs from the Dramatists, have given an inferior currency, but still a currency, to the best of the remainder. The earlier we have spoken of. But the songs of Greene and his fellows, though charming, cannot compare with those of the more properly Jacobean poets. To name only the

1 The most interesting collection and selection of verse of this class and time is undoubtedly Dr. Hannah's well-known and charming but rather oddly entitled Poems of Raleigh, Wotton, and other Courtly Poets in the Aldine Series. I say oddly entitled, because though Raleigh and Wotton were certainly courtiers, it would be hard to make the name good of some of the minor contributors.

best of each, Ben Jonson gives us the exquisite "Queen and Huntress," which is perhaps the best-known piece of his whole work; the pleasant "If I freely may discover," and best of all - unsurpassed indeed in any language for rolling majesty of rhythm and romantic charm of tone-"Drink to me only with thine eyes." Again the songs in Beaumont and Fletcher stand very high, perhaps highest of all next to Shakespere's in respect of the "woodnote wild." If the snatch of only half articulate poetry of the "Lay a garland on my hearse," of The Maid's Tragedy, is really Fletcher's, he has here equalled Shakespere himself. We may add to it the fantastic and charming "Beauty clear and fair," of The Elder Brother, the comic swing of "Let the bells ring," and "The fit's upon me now ;" all the songs without exception in The Faithful Shepherdess, which is much less a drama than a miscellany of the most delightful poetry; the spirited war-song in The Mad Lover, to which Dryden owed not a little; the catch, "Drink to-day and drown all sorrow;" the strange song of the dead host in The Lover's Progress; the exquisite "Weep no more," of The Queen of Corinth; the spirited "Let the mill go round," of The Maid in the Mill; the "Lovers rejoice," of Cupid's Revenge; the "Roses, their sharp spines being gone," which is one of the most Shakesperean things of The Two Noble Kinsmen; the famous "Hence, all you vain-delights," of The Nice Valour, which Milton expanded into Il Penseroso, and the laughing song of the same play. This long catalogue only contains a part of the singularly beautiful song work of the great pair of dramatists, and as an example we may give one of the least known from The Captain :

"Tell me, dearest, what is love?

'Tis a lightning from above;
Tis an arrow, 'tis a fire,

'Tis a boy they call Desire.

'Tis a grave,

Gapes to have

Those poor fools that long to prove.

"Tell me more, are women true?

Yes, some are, and some as you.
Some are willing, some are strange
Since you men first taught to change.
And till troth

Be in both,

All shall love to love anew.

"Tell me more yet, can they grieve?
Yes, and sicken sore, but live,

And be wise, and delay

When you men are as wise as they.
Then I see,

Faith will be

Never till they both believe."

The dirge of Vittoria Corombona and the preparation for death of The Duchess of Malfi are Webster's sole but sufficient contributions to the list. The witch songs of Middleton's Witch, and the gipsy, or rather tramp, songs of More Dissemblers besides Women and The Spanish Gipsy, have very high merit. The songs of Patient Grissell, which are pretty certainly Dekker's, have been noticed already. The otherwise worthless play of The Thracian Wonder, attributed to Webster and Rowley, contains an unusual number of good songs. Heywood and Massinger were not great at songs, and the superiority of those in The Sun's Darling over the songs in Ford's other plays, seems to point to the authorship of Dekker. Finally, James Shirley has the song gift of his greater predecessors. Every one knows "The glories of our birth and state," but this is by no means his only good song; it worthily closes the list of the kind a kind which, when brought together and perused separately, exhibits, perhaps, as well as anything else of equal compass, the extraordinary abundance of poetical spirit in the age. For songs like these are not to be hammered out by the most diligent ingenuity, not to be spun by the light of the most assiduously fed lamp. The wind of such inspiration blows where, and only where, it listeth.

CHAPTER IX

MILTON, TAYLOR, CLARENDON, BROWNE, HOBBES

DURING the second and third quarters of the seventeenth century, or (to take literary rather than chronological dates) between the death of Bacon and the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, there existed in England a quintet of men of letters, of such extraordinary power and individuality, that it may be doubted whether any other period of our own literature can show a group equal to them; while it is certain that no other literature, except, perhaps, in the age of Pericles, can match them. They were all, except Hobbes (who belonged by birth, though not by date and character of writing, to an earlier generation than the rest), born, and they all died, within a very few years of each other. All were prose writers of the very highest merit; and though only one was a poet, yet he had poetry enough to spare for all the five. Of the others, Clarendon, in some of the greatest characteristics of the historian, has been equalled by no Englishman, and surpassed by few foreigners. Jeremy Taylor has been called the most eloquent of men; and if this is a bold saying, it is scarcely too bold. stands with Bacon and Berkeley at the head of English-speaking philosophers, and is, if not in general grasp, in range of ideas, or in literary polish, yet in acuteness of thought and originality of expression, perhaps the superior of both his companions. If Browne is the least of the five, it is only because his excellence is more purely literary,—a matter of expression rather than of sub

Hobbes