even in the collection of his amatory verses called The Mistress. The Anacreontics exhibit his poetical powers to better advantage; their tone is joyous and spirited, and they abound in images of natural and poetic beauty. He planned and began a work of great pretensions, entitled the Davideis. It was intended to celebrate the sufferings and glories of the King of Israel; but it was left unfinished and is now utterly neglected. His talents were lyric, rather than epic, and he was therefore not qualified to develop so grand a theme in a masterly way.

Cowley deeply sympathized with the mighty revolution in philosophy which was inaugurated by Bacon; and perhaps the finest of his poems are those which with grave and well-adorned eloquence proclaim the nature and predict the triumph of the reforms in physical science.*

Donne, the founder of "the Metaphysical School," and his two disciples who have been named, Waller and Cowley, were the most prominent literary figures and the most influential and popular writers in the generation immediately after the Elizabethan period. Davenant and Denham held secondary, but important positions.

Sir William Davenant (1605-1668) derives his chief claim upon posterity from his connection with the revival of the drama at the termination of the Puritan rule. He succeeded Ben Jonson in the office of Poet Laureate, and during the reign of Charles I. was manager of the Court Theatre. An energetic and useful partisan of the Cavaliers, his share in the intrigues of the Civil War had nearly brought him to the scaffold; but his life was saved by the intercession of some influential Puritan whom tradition asserts to have been John Milton. After the Restoration, Davenant flourished under royal favor, continuing to write dramas and to superintend their performance, until his death. The French drama, in its most artificial and frivolous type, was the ideal of Charles II. and of his court. French influence revolutionized the English stage. Actresses, young, beautiful, and skilful, took the places filled by the boys of the Elizabethan era.† In every respect the mechanical adjuncts of the drama were improved. It is easy to see in Davenant's own plays and in those which he remodeled, how completely

* "Botany, in the mind of Cowley, turned into poetry."-Samuel Johnson.

+ The first English actress appeared on the stage in the play of Othello, in the reign of Charles II., 1661.

the taste for splendor of scenery, music, dancing and costumery, had displaced the passion of the earlier public for faithful and intense picturing of life and nature. He was an ardent worshiper of the genius of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare's great contemporaries; yet conformity to the degraded standard of the age obliged him, in attempting to revive their works, to transform their spirit so entirely that every intelligent reader must regard the change with disgust. Davenant's most popular dramas were, The Siege of Rhodes, The Law Against Lovers, The Cruel Brother and Albovine. His partisan writings were numerous and spirited. He received rapturous praise and fierce criticism from his contemporaries for an unfinished epic called Gondibert (108), in which a long series of lofty and chivalrous adventures are told in dignified but somewhat monotonous style.

Sir John Denham (1615-1668) was indifferent to learning in his youth, and throughout his life was addicted to the vice of gambling. No one had expected aught from him that would be worthy of a place in literature; but at twenty-six years of age he published a tragedy which won the applause of the critic and of the public. Two years later, his poem called Cooper's Hill appeared (109). That poem established his fame. It contains passages of fine description, and suggests many beautiful thoughts concerning the landscape near Windsor. Denham's language is pure and perspicuous, and is free from the fantastic metaphors abounding in the writings of his contemporaries. Dryden is thought to have been influenced by the regularity and vigor of Denham's verse.

In this age of artificial poets there were many who were interested in the religious agitations of the Puritan and the Cavalier. We can mention but four of them. George Wither was in thorough sympathy with the political and religious sentiments of Oliver Cromwell. He was a prolific writer in both prose and verse. The modern critics have given him more praise than former generations have considered his due. His prose attracts little attention. His pastoral poetry abounds in melody and in beauty of sentiment. His Hymns and Songs of the Church, and his Hallelujah, display his religious thought in worthy form. The whimsical conceits of the poetry of his day are occasionally found in his pages, but his style is generally simple, and expressive of natural and earnest feeling.

QUARLES, HERBERT, CRASHA W.

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Abuses Stript and Whipt was the title of his most famous satire, written in 1614. For that satire he was imprisoned.

Francis Quarles (1592-1644), was an ardent royalist. He exhibits many points of intellectual likeness to Wither, to whom, however, he is inferior in poetical sentiment. His most popular work was a collection of Divine Emblems, in which moral and religious precepts are inculcated in short poems of almost laughable quaintness, and illustrated by equally grotesque engravings.

George Herbert (1593-1632) and Richard Crashaw (died 1650) exemplify the exaltation of religious sentiment; and both are worthy of admiration, not only as Christian poets, but as good and pious priests. Herbert was of noble birth. He first distinguished himself by the graces and accomplishments of the courtly scholar; but afterwards entering the Church as rector of a country parish, he exhibited all the virtues which can adorn the calling which he has beautifully described in a prose treatise under the title of The Country Parson. His poems are principally short religious lyrics, combining pious aspiration with frequent and beautiful pictures of nature (99). He decorates the altar with the sweetest and most fragrant flowers of fancy and of wit. Although not entirely devoid of that perverted ingenuity which deformed Quarles and Wither, his most successful efforts almost attain the perfection of devotional poetry,-a calm yet ardent glow, a well-governed fervor which seems peculiarly to belong to the Church of which he was a minister. His collection of sacred lyrics is entitled, The Temple; or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations.

Crashaw was reared in the Anglican Church; but during the Puritan troubles he embraced the Romish faith and became canon of the Cathedral at Loretto. That he possessed an exquisite fancy, great talent for producing melody of verse, and that magnetic power over the reader which springs from deep earnestness, no one can deny (100). The most favorable specimens of his poetry are the Steps to the Temple, and the beautiful description entitled Music's Duel.

In the social life of the first half of this seventeenth century the gallant and frivolous Cavalier stands in contrast with the stern, serious Puritan. In its literature, romantic love and airy elegance appear beside the reverent sentiments of religious poetry. The

best representatives of the gayer poets are Robert Herrick (1591– 1674) (101), Sir John Suckling (1609–1641) (102), Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) (103), and Thomas Carew 1589–1639) (104). Herrick, after beginning his life in the brilliant and somewhat debauched literary society of the town and the theatre, took orders; but he continued to exhibit in his writings the voluptuous spirit of his youth. His poems were published under the names of Hesperides and Noble Numbers. They are all lyric, and the former are principally songs concerning love and wine; the latter are upon sacred subjects. In him we find the strangest mixture of sensual coarseness with exquisite refinement; yet in fancy, in spirit, in musical rhythm, he is never deficient.

Suckling and Lovelace are representative Cavalier poets; both suffered in the royal cause; both exemplify the spirit of loyalty to the king, and of gallantry to the ladies. Suckling's best production is the exquisite Ballad Upon a Wedding, in which, assuming the character of a rustic, he describes a fashionable marriage. Lovelace is more serious and earnest than Suckling; his lyrics breathe devoted loyalty rather than the passionate, half-jesting lovefancies of his rival. Such are the beautiful lines to Althea, composed while the author was in prison.

Carew's lyrics reflect the same spirit as Suckling's. His Inquiry, his Primrose, and his "He that Loves a Rosy Cheek” have all the grace, vivacity and elegance which should characterize such works

X

CHAPTER XIII.

THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

THE

HE Civil War of the seventeenth century was a religious as well as a political contest; and the prose literature of that time, therefore, exhibits a strong religious character. The Church of England exhibited her most glorious outburst of theological eloquence in the writings of Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and the other great Anglican Fathers; and in the ranks of the dissenters many remarkable men appeared, hardly inferior to the churchmen in learning and genius, and fully equal in sincerity and enthusiasm.

William Chillingworth (1602–1644), an eminent defender of Protestantism against the Church of Rome, was converted to the Roman Catholic religion while studying at Oxford, and went to the Jesuits' College at Douay. He subsequently returned to Oxford, renounced his new faith, and published his celebrated work against Catholicism, entitled The Religion of the Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (113). This has been esteemed a model of perspicuous logic. “His chief excellence," says Mr. Hallam, "is the close reasoning which avoids every dangerous admission, and yields to no ambiguousness of language. In later times his book obtained a high reputation; he was called the immortal Chillingworth; he was the favorite of all the moderate and the latitudinarian writers, of Tillotson, Locke, and Warburton.”

The writings of Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), though miscellaneous rather than theological, belong, chronologically as well as by their style, to this department (114). He was an exceedingly learned man, and passed the greater part of his life in practising physic in the ancient city of Norwich. Among the most popular of his works are the treatise on Hydrio taphia, or Urn