2 JULY 1948, Page 32

THIS is a serviceable straightforward anthology—with writers in chronological order,

the introduction short and three indexes. Mr. Hayward explains that he is " simply . . . trying to illustrate as fully as limitations of space and personal taste permit, the work of two .or Three generations of poets." The selection on the Alhole is admirable, though, indeed, personal taste is evident—in the very generous measure given, for example, to Ben Jonson (whose tones are Elizabethan rather than seventeenth-century) and the- poor measure to Herrick (eight short lyrics to eight of Lovelace). Though familiar work is included as well as less familiar there are here and there notable omissions, such as Vaughan's Night, though Vaughan otherwise is well represented. Mr. Hayward's dates are 1620, when, he says, " the distinctive charac- teristics of seventeenth-century poetry " emerged, to 1700 and the death of Dryden ; but actually the volume contains at least three manners—the late Elizabethan, that of Donne and his followers, and that of the Restoration, with Milton standing splendidly apart. (The Milton excerpts are valuable in giving a feeling of beautiful sober elegance of texture—a feeling of texture which is sometimes lost in the poems' length.) In spite of Mr. Hayward's praise of seventeenth- century satire, the anthology inevitably creates the old impression of a decline after the Restoration, a barrenness of spirit, though the voice of Traherne wondering at an innocent world is heard late. Indeed, apart from the greatest figures, it is the religious poets who stand out in this astonishing multitude of writers—fifty as given by Mr. Hayward. Altogether this anthology with its nearly 300 pages is excellent value.