The Elizabethan Poetry, as it is rather vaguely termed, forms the substance of this Book, which contains pieces from Wyat under Henry VIII to Shakespeare midway through the reign of James I, and Drummond who carried on the early manner to a still later period. There is here a wide range of style;—from simplicity expressed in a language hardly yet broken-in to verse,—through the pastoral fancies and Italian conceits of the strictly Elizabethan time,—to the passionate reality of Shakespeare: yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:—nor less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterized our lyrical poetry,—unless when, as in especial with Shakespeare, the 'purple light of Love' is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection. For the didactic verse of the century, although lyrical in form, yet very rarely rises to the pervading emotion, the golden cadence, proper to the lyric.

It should be observed that this and the following Summaries apply in the main to the Collection here presented, in which (besides its restriction to Lyrical Poetry) a strictly representative or historical Anthology has not been aimed at. Great excellence, in human art as in human character, has from the beginning of things been even more uniform than mediocrity, by virtue of the closeness of its approach to Nature:—and so far as the standard of Excellence kept in view has been attained in this volume, a comparative absence of extreme or temporary phases in style, a similarity of tone and manner, will be found throughout:—something neither modern nor ancient, but true and speaking to the heart of man alike throughout all ages.

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23 whist: hushed, quieted.

—4 Rouse Memnon's mother: Awaken the Dawn from the dark Earth and the clouds where she is resting. This is one of that limited class of early mythes which may be reasonably interpreted as representations of natural phenomena. Aurora in the old mythology is mother of Memnon (the East), and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth and Sky during the last hours of Night). She leaves him every morning in renewed youth, to prepare the way for Phoebus (the Sun), whilst Tithonus remains in perpetual old age and grayness.

3— l. 23 by Peneus' stream: Phoebus loved the Nymph Daphne whom he met by the river Peneus in the vale of Tempe. L. 27 Amphion's lyre: He was said to have built the walls of Thebes to the sound of his music. L. 35 Night like a drunkard reels: Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 3: 'The grey-eyed morn smiles,' &c.—It should be added that three lines, which appeared hopelessly misprinted, have been omitted in this Poem.

46 Time's chest: in which he is figuratively supposed to lay up past treasures. So in Troilus, Act III, Scene 3, 'Time hath a wallet at his back' &c. In the Arcadia, chest is used to signify tomb.

57 A fine example of the high wrought and conventional Elizabethan Pastoralism, which it would be unreasonable to criticize on the ground of the unshepherdlike or unreal character of some images suggested. Stanza 6 was perhaps inserted by Izaak Walton.

68 This beautiful lyric is one of several recovered from the very rare Elizabethan Song-books, for the publication of which our thanks are due to Mr. A. H. Bullen (1887, 1888).

812 One stanza has been here omitted, in accordance with the principle noticed in the Preface. Similar omissions occur in a few other poems. The more serious abbreviation by which it has been attempted to bring Crashaw's 'Wishes' and Shelley's 'Euganean Hills,' with one or two more, within the scheme of this selection, is commended with much diffidence to the judgment of readers acquainted with the original pieces.

913 Sidney's poetry is singularly unequal; his short life, his frequent absorption in public employment, hindered doubtless the development of his genius. His great contemporary fame, second only, it appears, to Spenser's, has been hence obscured. At times he is heavy and even prosaic; his simplicity is rude and bare; his verse unmelodious. These, however, are the 'defects of his merits.' In a certain depth and chivalry of feeling,—in the rare and noble quality of disinterestedness (to put it in one word),—he has no superior, hardly perhaps an equal, amongst our Poets; and after or beside Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Astrophel and Stella, in the Editor's judgment, offers the most intense and powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry.—Hundreds of years: 'The very rapture of love,' says Mr. Ruskin; 'A lover like this does not believe his mistress can grow old or die.'

1219 Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to 'the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries;' and he seems to have caught, in those southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost contemporary Art of Venice,—the glory and the glow of Veronese, Titian, or Tintoret.—From the same romance is No. 71: a charming picture in the purest style of the later Italian Renaissance.

The clear (l. 1) is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old cosmography. For a fair there's fairer none: If you desire a Beauty, there is none more beautiful than Rosaline.

14 22 Another gracious lyric from an Elizabethan Song-book, first reprinted (it is believed) in Mr. W. J. Linton's 'Rare Poems,' in 1883.

15 23 that fair thou owest: that beauty thou ownest.

16 25 From one of the three Song-books of T. Campion, who appears to have been author of the words which he set to music. His merit as a lyrical poet (recognized in his own time, but since then forgotten) has been again brought to light by Mr. Bullen's taste and research:—swerving (st. 2) is his conjecture for changing in the text of 1601.

20 31 the star Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken: apparently, Whose stellar influence is uncalculated, although his angular altitude from the plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon used by astrologers has been determined.

20 32 This lovely song appears, as here given, in Puttenham's 'Arte of English Poesie,' 1589. A longer and inferior form was published in the 'Arcadia' of 1590: but Puttenham's prefatory words clearly assign his version to Sidney's own authorship.

23 37 keel: keep cooler by stirring round.

24 39 expense: loss.

— 40 prease: press.

25 41 Nativity, once in the main of light: when a star has risen and entered on the full stream of light;—another of the astrological phrases no longer familiar.

Crooked eclipses: as coming athwart the Sun's apparent course.

Wordsworth, thinking probably of the 'Venus' and the 'Lucrece,' said finely of Shakespeare: 'Shakespeare could not have written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought.' This prodigality of nature is exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here given (which from the wealth of the material, required greater consideration than any other portion of the Editor's task),—contains many that will not be fully felt and understood without some earnestness of thought on the reader's part. But he is not likely to regret the labour.

26 42 upon misprision growing: either, granted in error, or, on the growth of contempt.

— 43 With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's 'Give me that man That is not passion's slave' &c. Shakespeare's writings show the deepest sensitiveness to passion:—hence the attraction he felt in the contrasting effects of apathy.

26 44 grame: sorrow. Renaissance influences long impeded the return of English poets to the charming realism of this and a few other poems by Wyat.

28 45 Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.

29 47 In the old legend it is now Philomela, now Procne (the swallow) who suffers violence from Tereus. This song has a fascination in its calm intensity of passion; that 'sad earnestness and vivid exactness' which Cardinal Newman ascribes to the master-pieces of ancient poetry.

31 50 proved: approved.

— 51 censures: judges.

— 52 Exquisite in its equably-balanced metrical flow.

32 53 Judging by its style, this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may, perhaps, be referred to the earlier years of Elizabeth. Late forgot: lately.

35 57 Printed in a little Anthology by Nicholas Breton, 1597. It is, however, a stronger and finer piece of work than any known to be his.—St. 1 silly: simple; dole: grief; chief: chiefly. St. 3 If there be ...: obscure: Perhaps, if there be any who speak harshly of thee, thy pain may plead for pity from Fate.

This poem, with 60 and 143, are each graceful variations of a long popular theme.

36 58 That busy archer: Cupid. Descries: used actively; points out.—'The last line of this poem is a little obscured by transposition. He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue?' (C. Lamb).

37 59 White Iope: suggested, Mr. Bullen notes, by a passage in Propertius (iii, 20) describing Spirits in the lower world:

38 62 cypres or cyprus,—used by the old writers for crape: whether from the French crespe or from the Island whence it was imported. Its accidental similarity in spelling to cypress has, here and in Milton's Penseroso, probably confused readers.

39 63 ramage: confused noise.

41 66 'I never saw anything like this funeral dirge,' says Charles Lamb, 'except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.'

43 70 Paraphrased from an Italian madrigal

44 72 crystal: fairness.

45 73 stare: starling.

— 74 This 'Spousal Verse' was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. Nowhere has Spenser more emphatically displayed himself as the very poet of Beauty: The Renaissance impulse in England is here seen at its highest and purest.

The genius of Spenser, like Chaucer's, does itself justice only in poems of some length. Hence it is impossible to represent it in this volume by other pieces of equal merit, but of impracticable dimensions. And the same applies to such poems as the Lover's Lament or the Ancient Mariner.

46 — entrailed: twisted. Feateously: elegantly.

48 — shend: shame.

49 — a noble peer: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.

— — Elisa: Elizabeth.

50 — twins of Jove: the stars Castor and Pollux: baldric, belt; the zodiac.

52 79 This lyric may with very high probability be assigned to Campion, in whose first Book of Airs it appeared (1601). The evidence sometimes quoted ascribing it to Lord Bacon appears to be valueless.

Summary of Book Second.

This division, embracing generally the latter eighty years of the Seventeenth century, contains the close of our Early poetical style and the commencement of the Modern. In Dryden we see the first master of the new: in Milton, whose genius dominates here as Shakespeare's in the former book,—the crown and consummation of the early period. Their splendid Odes are far in advance of any prior attempts, Spenser's excepted: they exhibit that wider and grander range which years and experience and the struggles of the time conferred on Poetry. Our Muses now give expression to political feeling, to religious thought, to a high philosophic statesmanship in writers such as Marvell, Herbert, and Wotton: whilst in Marvell and Milton, again, we find noble attempts, hitherto rare in our literature, at pure description of nature, destined in our own age to be continued and equalled. Meanwhile the poetry of simple passion, although before 1660 often deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and afterwards by levity and an artificial tone,—produced in Herrick and Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan: until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself, and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.—That the change from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and simplicity is undeniable; yet the bolder and wider scope which Poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results have been no slight compensation.

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58 85 l. 8 whist: hushed.

— — l. 32 than: obsolete for then: Pan: used here for the Lord of all.

59 — l. 38 consort: Milton's spelling of this word, here and elsewhere, has been followed, as it is uncertain whether he used it in the sense of accompanying, or simply for concert.

61 — l. 21 Lars and Lemures: household gods and spirits of relations dead. Flamens (l. 24) Roman priests. That twice-batter'd god (l. 29) Dagon.

62 — l. 6 Osiris, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This mythe, reproduced in Syria and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, may have originally signified the annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn overcomes Typho. L. 8 unshower'd grass: as watered by the Nile only. L. 33 youngest-teemed: last-born. Bright-harness'd (l. 37) armoured.

64 87 The Late Massacre: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655 by the Duke of Savoy. No more mighty Sonnet than this 'collect in verse,' as it has been justly named, probably can be found in any language. Readers should observe that it is constructed on the original Italian or ProvenÇal model. This form, in a language such as ours, not affluent in rhyme, presents great difficulties; the rhymes are apt to be forced, or the substance commonplace. But, when successfully handled, it has a unity and a beauty of effect which place the strict Sonnet above the less compact and less lyrical systems adopted by Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and other Elizabethan poets.

65 88 Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650, and Marvell probably wrote his lines soon after, whilst living at Nunappleton in the Fairfax household. It is hence not surprising that (st. 21-24) he should have been deceived by Cromwell's professed submissiveness to the Parliament which, when it declined to register his decrees, he expelled by armed violence:—one despotism, by natural law, replacing another. The poet's insight has, however, truly prophesied that result in his last two lines.

This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our language, and more in Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is occasionally obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The meaning of st. 5 is 'rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty spirit, and limitation more hateful than opposition.' The allusion in st. 11 is to the old physical doctrines of the non-existence of a vacuum and the impenetrability of matter:—in st. 17 to the omen traditionally connected with the foundation of the Capitol at Rome:—forced, fated. The ancient belief that certain years in life complete natural periods and are hence peculiarly exposed to death, is introduced in st. 26 by the word climacteric.

68 89 Lycidas: The person here lamented is Milton's college contemporary, Edward King, drowned in 1637 whilst crossing from Chester to Ireland.

Strict Pastoral Poetry was first written or perfected by the Dorian Greeks settled in Sicily: but the conventional use of it, exhibited more magnificently in Lycidas than in any other pastoral, is apparently of Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a great artist, has here united ancient mythology, with what may be called the modern mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,—to direct Christian images. Yet the poem, if it gains in historical interest, suffers in poetry by the harsh intrusion of the writer's narrow and violent theological politics.—The metrical structure of this glorious elegy is partly derived from Italian models.

69 — l. 11 Sisters of the sacred well: the Muses, said to frequent the Pierian Spring at the foot of Mount Olympus.

70 — l. 10 Mona: Anglesea, called by the Welsh poets, the Dark Island, from its dense forests. Deva (l. 11) the Dee: a river which may have derived its magical character from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and English.—These places are introduced, as being near the scene of the shipwreck. Orpheus (l. 14) was torn to pieces by Thracian women. Amaryllis and Neaera (l. 24, 25) names used here for the love-idols of poets: as Damoetas previously for a shepherd. L. 31 the blind Fury: Atropos, fabled to cut the thread of life.

71 89 Arethuse (l. 1) and Mincius: Sicilian and Italian waters here alluded to as representing the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Vergil. L. 4 oat: pipe, used here like Collins' oaten stop l. 1, No. 186, for Song. L. 12 Hippotades: Aeolus, god of the Winds. Panope (l. 15) a Nereid. Certain names of local deities in the Hellenic mythology render some feature in the natural landscape, which the Greeks studied and analysed with their usual unequalled insight and feeling. Panope seems to express the boundlessness of the ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared with the limited sky-line of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or Asia Minor. Camus (l. 19) the Cam: put for King's University. The sanguine flower (l. 22) the Hyacinth of the ancients: probably our Iris. The Pilot (l. 25) Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the Church on earth, to foretell 'the ruin of our corrupted clergy,' as Milton regarded them, 'then in their heighth' under Laud's primacy.

72 — l. 1 scrannel: screeching; apparently Milton's coinage (Masson). L. 5 the wolf: the Puritans of the time were excited to alarm and persecution by a few conversions to Roman Catholicism which had recently occurred. Alpheus (l. 9) a stream in Southern Greece, supposed to flow underseas to join the Arethuse. Swart star (l. 15) the Dog-star, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in ancient times occurred soon after midsummer: l. 19 rathe: early. L. 36 moist vows: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea. Bellerus (l. 37) a giant, apparently created here by Milton to personify Belerium, the ancient title of the Land's End. The great Vision:—the story was that the Archangel Michael had appeared on the rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name. Milton calls on him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to pity Lycidas, if his body has drifted into the troubled waters off the Land's End. Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places in that district (then through our trade with Corunna probably less unfamiliar to English ears), are named,—Namancos now Mujio in Galicia, Bayona north of the Minho, or perhaps a fortified rock (one of the Cies Islands) not unlike Saint Michael's Mount, at the entrance of Vigo Bay.

73 89 l. 6 ore: rays of golden light. Doric lay (l. 25) Sicilian, pastoral.

75 93 The assault was an attack on London expected in 1642, when the troops of Charles I reached Brentford. 'Written on his door' was in the original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in Aldersgate Street.

The Emathian Conqueror: When Thebes was destroyed (B.C. 335) and the citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar to be spared.

76 — l. 2, the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet: Plutarch has a tale that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B.C. took Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the Electra of Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity between the lines quoted (167, 168 Ed. Dindorf) and the result ascribed to them.

— 95 A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;—that written by thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, have left similar specimens.

78 98 These beautiful verses should be compared with Wordsworth's great Ode on Immortality: and a copy of Vaughan's very rare little volume appears in the list of Wordsworth's library.—In imaginative intensity, Vaughan stands beside his contemporary Marvell.

79 99 Favonius: the spring wind.

80 100 Themis: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his mother to Sir E. Coke:—hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley, Milton's allusion to the bench. L. 8: Sweden was then at war with Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands.

82 103 l. 28 Sidneian showers: either in allusion to the conversations in the 'Arcadia,' or to Sidney himself as a model of 'gentleness' in spirit and demeanour.

85 105 Delicate humour, delightfully united to thought, at once simple and subtle. It is full of conceit and paradox, but these are imaginative, not as with most of our Seventeenth Century poets, intellectual only.

88 110 Elizabeth of Bohemia: Daughter to James I, and ancestor of Sophia of Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and courtly compliment.

89 111 Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J. Ley, afterwards Earl of Marlborough, who died March, 1629, coincidently with the dissolution of the third Parliament of Charles' reign. Hence Milton poetically compares his death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after Philip's victory in 328 B.C.

93 118 A masterpiece of humour, grace, and gentle feeling, all, with Herrick's unfailing art, kept precisely within the peculiar key which he chose,—or Nature for him,—in his Pastorals. L. 2 the god unshorn: Imberbis Apollo. St. 2 beads: prayers.

96 123 With better taste, and less diffuseness, Quarles might (one would think) have retained more of that high place which he held in popular estimate among his contemporaries.

99 127 From Prison: to which his active support of Charles I twice brought the high-spirited writer. L. 7 Gods: thus in the original; Lovelace, in his fanciful way, making here a mythological allusion. Birds, commonly substituted, is without authority. St. 3, l. 1 committed: to prison.

100 128 St. 2 l. 4 blue-god: Neptune.

104 133 Waly waly: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the pronunciation of which are preserved in the word caterwaul. Brae, hillside: burn, brook: busk, adorn. Saint Anton's Well: below Arthur's Seat by Edinburgh. Cramasie, crimson.

105 134 This beautiful example of early simplicity is found in a Song-book of 1620.

106 135 burd, maiden.

107 136 corbies, crows: fail, turf: hause, neck: theek, thatch.—If not in their origin, in their present form this, with the preceding poem and 133, appear due to the Seventeenth Century, and have therefore been placed in Book II.

108 137 The poetical and the prosaic, after Cowley's fashion, blend curiously in this deeply-felt elegy.

112 141 Perhaps no poem in this collection is more delicately fancied, more exquisitely finished. By placing his description of the Fawn in a young girl's mouth, Marvell has, as it were, legitimated that abundance of 'imaginative hyperbole' to which he is always partial: he makes us feel it natural that a maiden's favourite should be whiter than milk, sweeter than sugar—'lilies without, roses within,' The poet's imagination is justified in its seeming extravagance by the intensity and unity with which it invests his picture.

113 142 The remark quoted in the note to No. 65 applies equally to these truly wonderful verses. Marvell here throws himself into the very soul of the Garden with the imaginative intensity of Shelley in his West Wind.—This poem appears also as a translation in Marvell's works. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare, answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:—

115 143 St. 3 tutties: nosegays. St. 4 silly: simple.

L'AllÉgro and Il Penseroso. It is a striking proof of Milton's astonishing power, that these, the earliest great Lyrics of the Landscape in our language, should still remain supreme in their style for range, variety, and melodious beauty. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects of Nature and of Life are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner.—With that of L'AllÉgro may be compared a similar mythe in the first Section of the first Book of S. Marmion's graceful Cupid and Psyche, 1637.

116 144 The mountain-nymph; compare Wordsworth's Sonnet, No. 254. L. 38 is in apposition to the preceding, by a syntactical license not uncommon with Milton.

118 — l. 14 Cynosure; the Pole Star. Corydon, Thyrsis, &c.: Shepherd names from the old Idylls. Rebeck (l. 28) an elementary form of violin.

119 — l. 24 Jonson's learned sock: His comedies are deeply coloured by classical study. L. 28 Lydian airs: used here to express a light and festive style of ancient music. The 'Lydian Mode,' one of the seven original Greek Scales, is nearly identical with our 'Major.'

120 145 l. 3 bestead: avail. L. 10 starr'd Ethiop queen: Cassiopeia, the legendary Queen of Ethiopia, and thence translated amongst the constellations.

121 — Cynthia: the Moon: Milton seems here to have transferred to her chariot the dragons anciently assigned to Demeter and to Medea.

122 — Hermes, called Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the Neo-Platonist school. L. 27 Thebes, &c.: subjects of Athenian Tragedy. Buskin'd (l. 30) tragic, in opposition to sock above. L. 32 Musaeus: a poet in Mythology. L. 37 him that left half-told: Chaucer in his incomplete 'Squire's Tale.'

123 — great bards: Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, are here presumably intended. L. 9 frounced: curled. The Attic Boy (l. 10) Cephalus.

124 146 Emigrants supposed to be driven towards America by the government of Charles I.

125 — l. 9, 10. But apples, &c. A fine example of Marvell's imaginative hyperbole.

— 147 l. 6 concent: harmony.

128 149 A lyric of a strange, fanciful, yet solemn beauty:—Cowley's style intensified by the mysticism of Henry More.—St. 2 monument: the World.

129 151 Entitled 'A Song in Honour of St. Cecilia's Day: 1697.'

Summary of Book Third

It is more difficult to characterize the English Poetry of the Eighteenth century than that of any other. For it was an age not only of spontaneous transition, but of bold experiment: it includes not only such absolute contrasts as distinguish the 'Rape of the Lock' from the 'Parish Register,' but such vast contemporaneous differences as lie between Pope and Collins, Burns and Cowper. Yet we may clearly trace three leading moods or tendencies:—the aspects of courtly or educated life represented by Pope and carried to exhaustion by his followers; the poetry of Nature and of Man, viewed through a cultivated, and at the same time an impassioned frame of mind by Collins and Gray:—lastly, the study of vivid and simple narrative, including natural description, begun by Gay and Thomson, pursued by Burns and others in the north, and established in England by Goldsmith, Percy, Crabbe, and Cowper. Great varieties in style accompanied these diversities in aim: poets could not always distinguish the manner suitable for subjects so far apart: and the union of conventional and of common language, exhibited most conspicuously by Burns, has given a tone to the poetry of that century which is better explained by reference to its historical origin than by naming it artificial. There is, again, a nobleness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense manly, excellence in many of the writers:—nor can that period be justly termed tame and wanting in originality, which produced poems such as Pope's Satires, Gray's Odes and Elegy, the ballads of Gay and Carey, the songs of Burns and Cowper. In truth Poetry at this, as at all times, was a more or less unconscious mirror of the genius of the age: and the many complex causes which made the Eighteenth century the turning-time in modern European civilization are also more or less reflected in its verse. An intelligent reader will find the influence of Newton as markedly in the poems of Pope, as of Elizabeth in the plays of Shakespeare. On this great subject, however, these indications must here be sufficient.

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134 153 We have no poet more marked by rapture, by the ecstasy which Plato held the note of genuine inspiration, than Collins. Yet but twice or thrice do his lyrics reach that simplicity, that sinceram sermonis Attici gratiam to which this ode testifies his enthusiastic devotion. His style, as his friend Dr. Johnson truly remarks, was obscure; his diction often harsh and unskilfully laboured; he struggles nobly against the narrow, artificial manner of his age, but his too scanty years did not allow him to reach perfect mastery. St. 3 Hybla: near Syracuse. Her whose ... woe: the nightingale, 'for which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness'; Collins here refers to the famous chorus in the Oedipus at Colonus. St. 4 Cephisus: the stream encircling Athens on the north and west, passing Colonus. St. 6 stay'd to sing: stayed her song when Imperial tyranny was established at Rome. St. 7 refers to the Italian amourist poetry of the Renaissance: In Collins' day, Dante was almost unknown in England. St. 8 meeting soul: which moves sympathetically towards Simplicity as she comes to inspire the poet. St. 9 Of these: Taste and Genius.

The Bard. In 1757, when this splendid ode was completed, so very little had been printed, whether in Wales or in England, in regard to Welsh poetry, that it is hard to discover whence Gray drew his Cymric allusions. The fabled massacre of the Bards (shown to be wholly groundless in Stephens' Literature of the Kymry) appears first in the family history of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir (cir. 1600), not published till 1773; but the story seems to have passed in MS. to Carte's History, whence it may have been taken by Gray. The references to high-born Hoel and soft Llewellyn; to Cadwallo and Urien; may, similarly, have been derived from the 'Specimens' of early Welsh poetry, by the Rev. E. Evans:—as, although not published till 1764, the MS., we learn from a letter to Dr. Wharton, was in Gray's hands by July 1760, and may have reached him by 1757. It is, however, doubtful whether Gray (of whose acquaintance with Welsh we have no evidence) must not have been also aided by some Welsh scholar. He is one of the poets least likely to scatter epithets at random: 'soft' or gentle is the epithet emphatically and specially given to Llewelyn in contemporary Welsh poetry, and is hence here used with particular propriety. Yet, without such assistance as we have suggested, Gray could hardly have selected the epithet, although applied to the King (p. 141-3) among a crowd of others, in Llygad Gwr's Ode, printed by Evans.—After lamenting his comrades (st. 2, 3) the Bard prophesies the fate of Edward II, and the conquests of Edward III (4): his death and that of the Black Prince (5): of Richard II, with the wars of York and Lancaster, the murder of Henry VI (the meek usurper), and of Edward V and his brother (6). He turns to the glory and prosperity following the accession of the Tudors (7), through Elizabeth's reign (8): and concludes with a vision of the poetry of Shakespeare and Milton.

140 159 l. 13 Glo'ster: Gilbert de Clare, son-in-law to Edward. Mortimer, one of the Lords Marchers of Wales.

141 159 High-born Hoel, soft Llewellyn (l. 15); the Dissertatio de Bardis of Evans names the first as son to the King Owain Gwynedd: Llewelyn, last King of North Wales, was murdered 1282. L. 16 Cadwallo: Cadwallon (died 631) and Urien Rheged (early kings of Gwynedd and Cumbria respectively) are mentioned by Evans (p. 78) as bards none of whose poetry is extant. L. 20 Modred: Evans supplies no data for this name, which Gray (it has been supposed) uses for Merlin (Myrddin Wyllt), held prophet as well as poet.—The Italicized lines mark where the Bard's song is joined by that of his predecessors departed. L. 22 Arvon: the shores of Carnarvonshire opposite Anglesey. Whether intentionally or through ignorance of the real dates, Gray here seems to represent the Bard as speaking of these poets, all of earlier days, Llewelyn excepted, as his own contemporaries at the close of the thirteenth century.

Gray, whose penetrating and powerful genius rendered him in many ways an initiator in advance of his age, is probably the first of our poets who made some acquaintance with the rich and admirable poetry in which Wales from the Sixth Century has been fertile,—before and since his time so barbarously neglected, not in England only. Hence it has been thought worth while here to enter into a little detail upon his Cymric allusions.

142 — l. 5 She-wolf: Isabel of France, adulterous Queen of Edward II.—L. 35 Towers of Julius: the Tower of London, built in part, according to tradition, by Julius Caesar.

143 — l. 2 bristled boar: the badge of Richard III. L. 7 Half of thy heart: Queen Eleanor died soon after the conquest of Wales. L. 18 Arthur: Henry VII named his eldest son thus, in deference to native feeling and story.

144 161 The Highlanders called the battle of Culloden, Drumossie.

145 162 lilting, singing blithely: loaning, broad lane: bughts, pens: scorning, rallying: dowie, dreary: daffin' and gabbin', joking and chatting: leglin, milkpail: shearing, reaping: bandsters, sheaf-binders: lyart, grizzled: runkled, wrinkled: fleeching, coaxing: gloaming, twilight: bogle, ghost: dool, sorrow.

147 164 The Editor has found no authoritative text of this poem, to his mind superior to any other of its class in melody and pathos. Part is probably not later than the seventeenth century: in other stanzas a more modern hand, much resembling Scott's, is traceable. Logan's poem (163) exhibits a knowledge rather of the old legend than of the old verses,—Hecht, promised; the obsolete hight: mavis, thrush: ilka, every: lav'rock, lark: haughs, valley-meadows: twined, parted from: marrow, mate: syne, then.

148 165 The Royal George, of 108 guns, whilst undergoing a partial careening at Spithead, was overset about 10 A.M. Aug. 29, 1782. The total loss was believed to be nearly 1000 souls.—This little poem might be called one of our trial-pieces, in regard to taste. The reader who feels the vigour of description and the force of pathos underlying Cowper's bare and truly Greek simplicity of phrase, may assure himself se valde profecisse in poetry.

151 167 A little masterpiece in a very difficult style: Catullus himself could hardly have bettered it. In grace, tenderness, simplicity, and humour, it is worthy of the Ancients: and even more so, from the completeness and unity of the picture presented.

155 172 Perhaps no writer who has given such strong proofs of the poetic nature has left less satisfactory poetry than Thomson. Yet this song, with 'Rule Britannia' and a few others, must make us regret that he did not more seriously apply himself to lyrical writing.

156 174 With what insight and tenderness, yet in how few words, has this painter-poet here himself told Love's Secret!

157 177 l. 1 Aeolian lyre: the Greeks ascribed the origin of their Lyrical Poetry to the Colonies of Aeolis in Asia Minor.

158 — Thracia's hills (l. 9) supposed a favourite resort of Mars. Feather'd king (l. 13) the Eagle of Jupiter, admirably described by Pindar in a passage here imitated by Gray. Idalia (l. 19) in Cyprus, where Cytherea (Venus) was especially worshipped.

159 — l. 6 Hyperion: the Sun. St. 6-8 allude to the Poets of the Islands and Mainland of Greece, to those of Rome and of England.

160 — l. 27 Theban Eagle: Pindar.

163 178 l. 5 chaste-eyed Queen: Diana.

164 179 From that wild rhapsody of mingled grandeur, tenderness, and obscurity, that 'medley between inspiration and possession,' which poor Smart is believed to have written whilst in confinement for madness.

165 181 the dreadful light: of life and experience.

166 182 Attic warbler: the nightingale.

168 184 sleekit, sleek: bickering brattle, flittering flight: laith, loth: pattle, ploughstaff: whyles, at times: a daimenicker, a corn-ear now and then: thrave, shock: lave, rest: foggage, after-grass: snell, biting: but hald, without dwelling-place: thole, bear: cranreuch, hoar-frost: thy lane, alone: a-gley, off the right line, awry.

175 188 stoure, dust-storm; braw, smart.

176 189 scaith, hurt: tent, guard: steer, molest.

177 191 drumlie, muddy: birk, birch.

178 192 greet, cry: daurna, dare not.—There can hardly exist a poem more truly tragic in the highest sense than this: nor, perhaps, Sappho excepted, has any Poetess equalled it.

180 193 fou, merry with drink: coost, carried: unco skeigh, very proud: gart, forced: abeigh, aside: Ailsa craig, a rock in the Firth of Clyde: grat his een bleert, cried till his eyes were bleared: lowpin, leaping: linn, waterfall: sair, sore: smoor'd, smothered: crouse and canty, blithe and gay.

181 194 Burns justly named this 'one of the most beautiful songs in the Scots or any other language.' One stanza, interpolated by Beattie, is here omitted:—it contains two good lines, but is out of harmony with the original poem. Bigonet, little cap: probably altered from bÉguinette: thraw, twist: caller, fresh.

182 195 Burns himself, despite two attempts, failed to improve this little absolute masterpiece of music, tenderness, and simplicity: this 'Romance of a life' in eight lines.—Eerie: strictly, scared: uneasy.

183 196 airts, quarters: row, roll: shaw, small wood in a hollow, spinney: knowes, knolls. The last two stanzas are not by Burns.

184 197 jo, sweetheart: brent, smooth: pow, head.

— 198 leal, faithful. St. 3 fain, happy.

185 199 Henry VI founded Eton.

188 200 Written in 1773, towards the beginning of Cowper's second attack of melancholy madness—a time when he altogether gave up prayer, saying, 'For him to implore mercy would only anger God the more.' Yet had he given it up when sane, it would have been 'maior insania.'

191 203 The Editor would venture to class in the very first rank this Sonnet, which, with 204, records Cowper's gratitude to the Lady whose affectionate care for many years gave what sweetness he could enjoy to a life radically wretched. Petrarch's sonnets have a more ethereal grace and a more perfect finish; Shakespeare's more passion; Milton's stand supreme in stateliness; Wordsworth's in depth and delicacy. But Cowper's unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the ancients would have called Irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature.—There is much mannerism, much that is unimportant or of now exhausted interest in his poems: but where he is great, it is with that elementary greatness which rests on the most universal human feelings. Cowper is our highest master in simple pathos.

193 205 Cowper's last original poem, founded upon a story told in Anson's 'Voyages.' It was written March 1799; he died in next year's April.

195 206 Very little except his name appears recoverable with regard to the author of this truly noble poem, which appeared in the 'Scripscrapologia, or Collins' Doggerel Dish of All Sorts,' with three or four other pieces of merit, Birmingham, 1804.—Everlasting; used with side-allusion to a cloth so named, at the time when Collins wrote.

Summary of Book Fourth

It proves sufficiently the lavish wealth of our own age in Poetry, that the pieces which, without conscious departure from the standard of Excellence, render this Book by far the longest, were with very few exceptions composed during the first thirty years of the Nineteenth century. Exhaustive reasons can hardly be given for the strangely sudden appearance of individual genius: that, however, which assigns the splendid national achievements of our recent poetry to an impulse from the France of the first Republic and Empire is inadequate. The first French Revolution was rather one result,—the most conspicuous, indeed, yet itself in great measure essentially retrogressive,—of that wider and more potent spirit which through enquiry and attempt, through strength and weakness, sweeps mankind round the circles (not, as some too confidently argue, of Advance, but) of gradual Transformation: and it is to this that we must trace the literature of Modern Europe. But, without attempting discussion on the motive causes of Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, we may observe that these Poets carried to further perfection the later tendencies of the Century preceding, in simplicity of narrative, reverence for human Passion and Character in every sphere, and love of Nature for herself:—that, whilst maintaining on the whole the advances in art made since the Restoration, they renewed the half-forgotten melody and depth of tone which marked the best Elizabethan writers:—that, lastly, to what was thus inherited they added a richness in language and a variety in metre, a force and fire in narrative, a tenderness and bloom in feeling, an insight into the finer passages of the Soul and the inner meanings of the landscape, a larger sense of Humanity,—hitherto scarcely attained, and perhaps unattainable even by predecessors of not inferior individual genius. In a word, the Nation which, after the Greeks in their glory, may fairly claim that during six centuries it has proved itself the most richly gifted of all nations for Poetry, expressed in these men the highest strength and prodigality of its nature. They interpreted the age to itself—hence the many phases of thought and style they present:—to sympathize with each, fervently and impartially, without fear and without fancifulness, is no doubtful step in the higher education of the soul. For purity in taste is absolutely proportionate to strength—and when once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely.

But the gallery which this Book offers to the reader will aid him more than any preface. It is a royal Palace of Poetry which he is invited to enter:

though it is, indeed, to the sympathetic eye only that its treasures will be visible.

page no.

197 208 This beautiful lyric, printed in 1783, seems to anticipate in its imaginative music that return to our great early age of song, which in Blake's own lifetime was to prove,—how gloriously! that the English Muses had resumed their 'ancient melody':—Keats, Shelley, Byron,—he overlived them all.

199 210 stout Cortez: History would here suggest BalbÓa: (A.T.) It may be noticed, that to find in Chapman's Homer the 'pure serene' of the original, the reader must bring with him the imagination of the youthful poet;—he must be 'a Greek himself,' as Shelley finely said of Keats.

202 212 The most tender and true of Byron's smaller poems.

203 213 This poem exemplifies the peculiar skill with which Scott employs proper names:—a rarely misleading sign of true poetical genius.

213 226 Simple as Lucy Gray seems, a mere narrative of what 'has been, and may be again,' yet every touch in the child's picture is marked by the deepest and purest ideal character. Hence, pathetic as the situation is, this is not strictly a pathetic poem, such as Wordsworth gives us in 221, Lamb in 264, and Scott in his Maid of Neidpath,—'almost more pathetic,' as Tennyson once remarked, 'than a man has the right to be.' And Lyte's lovely stanzas (224) suggest, perhaps, the same remark.

222 235 In this and in other instances the addition (or the change) of a Title has been risked, in hope that the aim of the piece following may be grasped more clearly and immediately.

228 242 This beautiful Sonnet was the last word of a youth, in whom, if the fulfilment may ever safely be prophesied from the promise, England lost one of the most rarely gifted in the long roll of her poets. Shakespeare and Milton, had their lives been closed at twenty-five, would (so far as we know) have left poems of less excellence and hope than the youth who, from the petty school and the London surgery, passed at once to a place with them of 'high collateral glory.'

230 245 It is impossible not to regret that Moore has written so little in this sweet and genuinely national style.

231 246 A masterly example of Byron's command of strong thought and close reasoning in verse:—as the next is equally characteristic of Shelley's wayward intensity.

240 253 Bonnivard, a Genevese, was imprisoned by the Duke of Savoy in Chillon on the lake of Geneva for his courageous defence of his country against the tyranny with which Piedmont threatened it during the first half of the Seventeenth century.—This noble Sonnet is worthy to stand near Milton's on the Vaudois massacre.

241 254 Switzerland was usurped by the French under Napoleon in 1800: Venice in 1797 (255).

243 259 This battle was fought Dec. 2, 1800, between the Austrians under Archduke John and the French under Moreau, in a forest near Munich. Hohen Linden means High Limetrees.

247 262 After the capture of Madrid by Napoleon, Sir J. Moore retreated before Soult and Ney to Corunna, and was killed whilst covering the embarkation of his troops.

257 272 The Mermaid was the club-house of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other choice spirits of that age.

258 273 Maisie: Mary.—Scott has given us nothing more complete and lovely than this little song, which unites simplicity and dramatic power to a wild-wood music of the rarest quality. No moral is drawn, far less any conscious analysis of feeling attempted:—the pathetic meaning is left to be suggested by the mere presentment of the situation. A narrow criticism has often named this, which maybe called the Homeric manner, superficial, from its apparent simple facility; but first-rate excellence in it is in truth one of the least common triumphs of Poetry.—This style should be compared with what is not less perfect in its way, the searching out of inner feeling, the expression of hidden meanings, the revelation of the heart of Nature and of the Soul within the Soul,—the analytical method, in short,—most completely represented by Wordsworth and by Shelley.

263 277 Wolfe resembled Keats, not only in his early death by consumption and the fluent freshness of his poetical style, but in beauty of character:—brave, tender, energetic, unselfish, modest. Is it fanciful to find some reflex of these qualities in the Burial and Mary? Out of the abundance of the heart ...

264 278 correi: covert on a hillside. Cumber: trouble.

265 250 This book has not a few poems of greater power and more perfect execution than Agnes and the extract which we have ventured to make from the deep-hearted author's Sad Thoughts (No. 224). But none are more emphatically marked by the note of exquisiteness.

266 281 st. 3 inch: island.

270 283 From Poetry for Children (1809), by Charles and Mary Lamb. This tender and original little piece seems clearly to reveal the work of that noble-minded and afflicted sister, who was at once the happiness, the misery, and the life-long blessing of her equally noble-minded brother.

278 289 This poem has an exaltation and a glory, joined with an exquisiteness of expression, which place it in the highest rank among the many masterpieces of its illustrious Author.

289 300 interlunar swoon: interval of the moon's invisibility.

294 304 Calpe: Gibraltar. Lofoden: the Maelstrom whirlpool off the N.W. coast of Norway.

295 305 This lovely poem refers here and there to a ballad by Hamilton on the subject better treated in 163 and 164.

307 315 Arcturi: seemingly used for northern stars. And wild roses, &c. Our language has perhaps no line modulated with more subtle sweetness.

308 316 Coleridge describes this poem as the fragment of a dream-vision,—perhaps, an opium-dream?—which composed itself in his mind when fallen asleep after reading a few lines about 'the Khan Kubla' in Purchas' Pilgrimage.

312 318 Ceres' daughter: Proserpine. God of Torment: Pluto.

320 321 The leading idea of this beautiful description of a day's landscape in Italy appears to be—On the voyage of life are many moments of pleasure, given by the sight of Nature, who has power to heal even the worldliness and the uncharity of man.

321 — l. 23 Amphitrite was daughter to Ocean.

325 322 l. 21 Maenad: a frenzied Nymph, attendant on Dionysos in the Greek mythology. May we not call this the most vivid, sustained, and impassioned amongst all Shelley's magical personifications of Nature?

326 — l. 5 Plants under water sympathize with the seasons of the land, and hence with the winds which affect them.

327 323 Written soon after the death, by shipwreck, of Wordsworth's brother John. This poem may be profitably compared with Shelley's following it. Each is the most complete expression of the innermost spirit of his art given by these great Poets:—of that Idea which, as in the case of the true Painter, (to quote the words of Reynolds,) 'subsists only in the mind: The sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it: it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last without imparting.'

328 — the Kind: the human race.

331 327 the Royal Saint: Henry VI.

331 328 st. 4 this folk: its has been here plausibly but, perhaps, unnecessarily, conjectured.—Every one knows the general story of the Italian Renaissance, of the Revival of Letters.—From Petrarch's day to our own, that ancient world has renewed its youth: Poets and artists, students and thinkers, have yielded themselves wholly to its fascination, and deeply penetrated its spirit. Yet perhaps no one more truly has vivified, whilst idealizing, the picture of Greek country life in the fancied Golden Age, than Keats in these lovely (if somewhat unequally executed) stanzas:—his quick imagination, by a kind of 'natural magic,' more than supplying the scholarship which his youth had no opportunity of gaining.

105 134 These stanzas are by Richard Verstegan (—c. 1635), a poet and antiquarian, published in his rare Odes (1601), under the title Our Blessed Ladies Lullaby, and reprinted by Mr. Orby Shipley in his beautiful Carmina Mariana (1893). The four stanzas here given form the opening of a hymn of twenty-four.