Who hath left his darling, th' east, Do not, then, wind up that light But shake your head, and scatter day! To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, True, a new mistress now I chase, And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such, As you, too, shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov'd I not honour more. To Althea, from Prison. When love with unconfined wings And my divine Althea brings When I lie tangled in her hair, When flowing cups run swiftly round When, linnet-like confined, I With shriller note shall sing Th' enlarged winds, that curl the flood, Stone walls do not a prison make, THOMAS RANDOLPH. THOMAS RANDOLPH (1605-1634) published a collection of miscellaneous poems, in addition to five dramatic pieces. He was born at Newnham, near Daventry, in Northamptonshire, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was early distinguished for his talents, which procured him the friendship of Ben Jonson, and the other wits of the day. Ben enrolled him among his adopted sons; but Randolph fell into intemperate habits, and the fine promise of his genius was destroyed by his death Birthplace of Randolph. at the age of twenty-nine. A monument was erected to his memory by Sir Christopher Hatton. To My Picture. When age hath made me what I am not now, To a Lady admiring herself in a Looking-glass. The thing that men most dote upon. 10 Now you have what to love, you'll say, What then is left for me, I pray? My face, sweet heart, if it please thee; That which you can, I cannot see : So either love shall gain his due, Yours, sweet, in me, and mine in you. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT, whose life occupies an important space in the history of the stage, preceding and after the Restoration, wrote a heroic poem entitled Gondibert, and some copies of miscellaneous verses. Davenant was born in 1605, and was the Sir William Davenant. son of a vintner at Oxford. There is a scandalous story, that he was the natural son of Shakspeare, who was in the habit of stopping at the Crown Tavern (kept by the elder Davenant) on his journeys between London and Stratford. This story was related to Pope by Betterton the player; but it seems to rest on no authority but idle tradition. Young Davenant must, however, have had a strong and precocious admiration of Shakspeare; for, when only ten years of age, he penned an ode, In Remembrance of Master William Shakspeare, which opens in the following strain : Beware, delighted poets, when you sing, Hangs there the pensive head. It is to be regretted (for the sake of Davenant, as well as of the world) that the great dramatist did not live to guide the taste and foster the genius of his youthful admirer, whose life presented some strange adventures. About the year 1628, Davenant began to write for the stage, and in 1638, on the death of Ben Jonson, he was appointed laureate. He was afterwards manager of Drury Lane, but, entering into the commotions and intrigues of the civil war, he was apprehended and confined in the Tower. He afterwards escaped to France. When the queen sent over to the Earl of Newcastle a quantity of military stores, Davenant resolved to return to England, and he distinguished himself so much in the cause of the royalists, that he was knighted for his skill and bravery. On the decline of the king's affairs, he returned to France, and wrote part of his Gondibert. His next step was to sail for Virginia as a colonial projector; but the vessel was captured by one of the parliamentary ships of war, and Davenant was lodged in prison at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. In 1650, he was removed to the Tower, preparatory to his being tried by the High Commission Court. His life was considered in danger, but he was released after two years' imprisonment. Milton is said to have interposed in his behalf; and as Davenant is reported to have interfered in favour of Milton when the royalists were again in the ascendant, after the Restoration, we would gladly believe the statement to be true. Such incidents give a peculiar grace and relief to the sternness and bitterness of party conflicts. At Talavera, the English and French troops for a moment suspended their conflict, to drink of a stream which flowed between them. The shells were passed across, from enemy to enemy, without apprehension or molestation. We, in the same manner, would rather assist political adversaries to drink of that fountain of intellectual pleasure, which should be the common refreshment of both parties, than disturb and pollute it with the havoc of unseasonable hostilities."* Milton and Davenant must have felt in this manner, when they waived their political differences in honour of genius and poesy. When the author of Gondibert obtained his enlargement, he set about establishing a theatre, and, to the surprise of all, succeeded in the attempt. After the Restoration, he again basked in royal favour, and continued to write and superintend the performance of plays till his death, April 7, 1668. The poem of Gondibert, though regarded by Davenant's friends and admirers (Cowley and Waller being of the number) as a great and durable monument of genius, is now almost utterly forgotten. The plot is romantic, but defective in interest; and its extreme length (about six thousand lines), and the description of versification in which it is written (the long four-lined stanza, with alternate rhymes, copied by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis), render the poem languid and tedious. The critics have been strangely at variance with each other as to its merits, but to general readers the poem may be said to be unknown. Davenant prefixed a long and elaborate preface to his poem, which is highly creditable to him for judgment, taste, and feeling, and may be considered the precursor of Dryden's admirable critical introductions to his plays. His worship of Shakspeare continued unabated to the last, though he was mainly instrumental, by his masques and scenery, in driving the elder bard from the stage. Dryden, in his preface to the Tempest, states, that he did not set any value on what he had written in that play, but out of gratitude to the memory of Sir William Davenant, 'who,' he adds, 'did me the honour to join me with him in the alteration of it. It was originally Shakspeare's a poet for whom he had particularly a high veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire.' To the Queen, Entertained at night by the Countess of Anglesey. 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; *Edinburgh Review, vol. 47. Smooth as the face of waters first appear'd, She fashions him she loved of angels' kind; Dares praise, with such full art, what make you here? As eagles, then, when nearest heaven they fly, Here, where the summer is so little seen, That leaves, her cheapest wealth, scarce reach at green; Misled a while from her much injured sphere; Song. The lark now leaves his watery nest, And to implore your light, he sings, Who look for day before his mistress wakes: Awake, awake, break through your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains and begin the dawn. [Description of the Virgin Birtha.] To Astragon, heaven for succession gave One only pledge, and Birtha was her name, Her beauty princes durst not hope to use, She never had in busy cities been, Of wild impossibles soon weary grow; And therefore perch on earthly things below; Affection turns to faith; and then love's fire 'And you, my alter'd mother, grown above This said, her soul into her breast retires; And trusts unanchor'd hopes in fleeting streams. She thinks, if ever anger in him sway, (The youthful warrior's most excus'd disease), Such chance her tears shall calm, as showers allay The accidental rage of winds and seas. JOHN CLEVELAND. JOHN CLEVELAND (1613-1658) was equally conspicuous for political loyalty and poetical conceit, and he carried both to the utmost verge. Cleveland's father was rector of a parish in Leicestershire. After completing his studies at Cambridge, the poet Ne'er warm'd with hopes, nor ere allay'd with fears; officiated as a college tutor, but joined the royal Not seeing punishment, could guess no sin; But here her father's precepts gave her skill, In autumn, berries; and in summer, flowers. And droop like flowers when evening shuts her eyes. * * Beneath a myrtle covert she does spend, Which nature purposely of bodies wrought. army when the civil war broke out. He was the loudest and most strenuous poet of the cause, and distinguished himself by a fierce satire on the Scots in 1647. Two lines of this truculent party tirade present a conceit at which our countrymen may now smile Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom; Not forced him wander, but confined him home. In 1655, the poet was seized at Norwich, and put in prison, being a person of great abilities, and so able to do the greater disservice.' Cleveland petitioned the Protector, stating that he was induced to believe that, next to his adherence to the royal party, the cause of his confinement was the narrowness of his estate; for none stood committed whose estate could bail them. I am the only prisoner,' he says, who have no acres to be my hostage;' and he ingeniously argues that poverty, if it is a fault, is its own punishment. Cromwell released the poor poet, who died three years afterwards in London. Independently of his strong and biting satires, which were the cause of his popularity while living, and which Butler partly imitated in Hudibras, Cleveland wrote some love verses containing morsels of genuine poetry, amidst a mass of affected metaphors and fancies. He carried gallantry to an extent bordering on the ludicrous, making all nature-sun and shade-do homage to his mistress. On Phillis, Walking before Sunrise. To chirp their matins; and the fan Of whistling winds, like organs play'd These miracles had cramp'd the sun, The trembling leaves through which he play'd, But what new-fashioned palsy's this, JAMES SHIRLEY. JAMES SHIRLEY, distinguished for his talents as a dramatist, published, in 1646, a volume of miscellaneous poems, which, without exhibiting any strongly-marked features or commanding intellect, are elegant and fanciful. His muse was not debased by the licentiousness of the age. The finest production of Shirley, Death's Final Conquest, occurs in one of his dramas. This piece is said to have been greatly admired by Charles II. The thoughts are elevated, and the expression highly poetical. Upon his Mistress Sad. Melancholy, hence, and get Some piece of earth to be thy seat, Here the air and nimble fire Would shoot up to meet desire : Sullen humour leave her blood, Mix not with the purer flood, But let pleasures swelling here, Make a spring-tide all the year. Love a thousand sweets distilling, And with pleasure bosoms filling, Charm all eyes that none may find us, Be above, before, behind us; And while we thy raptures taste, Compel time itself to stay, Or by forelock hold him fast, Lest occasion slip away. Echo and Narcissus. [From Narcissus.] Fair Echo, rise! sick-thoughted nymph, awake, If not the birds, who 'bout the coverts fly, Makes rich the leaves that in thy arbours are, Some rhetoric of thy tears to make him stay; He must be a rock that will not melt at these, Dropping these native diamonds in his way; Mistaken he may stoop at them, and this, Who knows how soon may help thee to a kiss. If neither love, thy beauty, nor thy tears, In vain I counsel her to put on wing; And their shrill horns chafe her delighted ear, Through which he quaintly steals his shine away; The hunters scatter; but the boy, o'erthrown In a dark part of the wood, complains alone. Him, Echo, led by her affections, found, Joy'd, you may guess, to reach him with her eye; But more, to see him rise without a wound Who yet obscures herself behind some tree; He tracks the sound, and finds her odorous grove. Whose azure leaves do warm their naked stalks; In their white double ruffs the daisies jet, And primroses are scattered in the walks, Two rows of elms ran with proportioned grace, A hill did guard, whilst with his trees, like hairs, * RICHARD CRASHAW. RICHARD CRASHAW, a religious poet, whose devotional strains and lyric raptures' evince the highest genius, was the son of a preacher at the Temple church, London. The date of his birth is not known, but in 1644 he was a fellow of Peterhouse college, Cambridge. Crashaw was, at all periods of his life, of an enthusiastic disposition. He lived for the greater part of several years in St Mary's church, near Peterhouse, engaged chiefly in religious offices and writing devotional poetry; and, as the preface to his works informs us, like à primitive saint, offering more prayers by night, than others usually offer in the day.' He is said to have been an eloquent and powerful preacher. Being ejected from his fellowship for non-compliance with the rules of the parliamentary army, he removed to France, and became a proselyte to the Roman Catholic faith. Through the friendship of Cowley, Crashaw obtained the notice of Henrietta Maria, then at Paris, and was recommended by her majesty to the dignitaries of the church in Italy. He became secretary to one of the cardinals, and a canon of the church of Loretto. In this situation, Crashaw died about the year 1650. Cowley honoured his memory with The meed of a melodious tear. The poet was an accomplished scholar, and his translations from the Latin and Italian possess great freedom, force, and beauty. He translated part of the Sospetto d'Herode, from the Italian of Marino; and passages of Crashaw's version are not unworthy of Milton, who had evidently seen the work. IIe thus describes the abode of Satan · Below the bottom of the great abyss, There, where one centre reconciles all things, * Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings While resident in Cambridge, Crashaw published a volume of Latin poems and epigrams, in one of which occurs the well-known conceit relative to the sacred miracle of water being turned into wine The conscious water saw its God and blush'd. In 1646 appeared his English poems, Steps to the Temple, The Delights of the Muses, and Carmen Deo Nostro. The greater part of the volume consists of religious poetry, in which Crashaw occasionally addresses the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalen, with all the passionate earnestness and fer |