MR. CAINE'S ANTHOLOGY OF LOVE-SONGS.* WHEN we speak or write

of "English poets," it is generally understood that the title includes the poets of the sister- countries. There is no such term as " Home-rule " in poetry, and Burns, Scott, and Moore belong as much to English literature as Spenser, Shakespeare, or Herrick. Mr. Caine, however, has judged otherwise, and some of the sweetest love- songs in the language are therefore excluded from his pages. This is, we think, a mistake ; but the editor of an anthology has a right to choose his own method, and it remains for the reviewer to judge of the selection from the standing-point of the compiler rather than from his own.

In his brief but pleasantly written introduction, Mr. Caine observes with justice that in a collection of this kind the eminence of many writers can be but faintly indicated ; and he adds that " many of the minor poets of the Restoration, and of the period following, have been cut out to make way for the more important body of writers who flourished early in this century, though born prior to 1801." Omissions are inevitable, and it is a commonplace to say that the judgment of a com- piler is seen as much in the poems which he rejects as in those which he inserts. In both respects, we think that Mr. Caine has, in a large degree, failed. The little volume contains many exquisite love-lyrics; but, unfortunately, a striking feature of the selection is the number of verses written by mere poetasters, and wholly, or comparatively, destitute of merit as poetry The editor does not seem to be aware that it is not what is curious, but what is good, and, indeed, the best of its kind, which the reader looks for in a volume like this ; and that no poem merits insertion in such a selection if it have not literary grace and some charm of fancy or imagination. Because the author of " Hudibras " was a very witty poet, is not a sufficient reason for inserting verses which, by Mr. Caine's admission, " deserve quotation mainly, if not entirely, from the interest attaching to the great writer." Henry Fielding, too, was a

Lase-Songs of English Poets, 1500-1800. With Notes. By Ralph H. Claire. London: Heinemann. 1892.

great writer; but it is absurd to say that he "distinguished himself " as a poet, and his lines " On a Halfpenny," like Butler's lines, must have been selected on the ground of the author's reputation.

The volume opens, as might have been anticipated, with Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey. Spenser, who has sung of love with an almost unmatched sweetness and felicity, is repre- sented by two sonnets ; but why, since Mr. Caine's interpreta- tion of the word " song " is broad enough to include Coleridge's " Love," does he not give us the whole or a portion of the " Epithalamium," which is perhaps the most beautiful love- lyric of which the language can boast P Sidney, too, is most inadequately represented by a single sonnet and a single lyric. The most beautiful of love-sonnets appears under Drayton's name, and the song, " To His Coy Love," is also inserted. Mr. Caine might have found space, too, for the poet's cheerful and spirited lines, " To His Rival." As we have not seen this lyric in any popular selection, five of the nine stanzas com- posing it shall be quoted :—

From Shakespeare, from Ben Jonson, from Campion, whose

resuscitation we owe to Mr. Millen, and from Herrick, Mr. Caine's selections are satisfactory. Of Herrick he says that "as he was the latest in the golden age of lyric poetry, so he was as a laureate of love, perhaps quite the best." The exquisite charm of Herrick's verse must be felt by all poetry lovers ; but even the choicest of his lyrics are marked by the absence of passion, and there is more of the pathos and rapture of love in Burns's " 0 Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast P " and in his " Farewell to Nancy," than in the whole of the "Hesperides." Mr. Caine is right in saying—though Mr.

Saintsbury would, we believe, deny it—that Dryden's songs are by no means on the level of his best work. He might have added that the greater number have the taint of the age upon them, and could not, however high their literary merit, be in- serted in an anthology. Why he gives us nothing from Crashaw, it is difficult to understand, for Crashaw's " Wishes" is a significant poem ; and room might surely have been found for Marvell's " Young Love," which would have been a pretty companion-poem to Prior's happy, love-making lines, "To a Child of Quality; " but both these pieces, alas, are omitted.

So also is the " Ballad upon a Wedding," in which, as Leigh Hunt says, Suckling's "fancy is so full of gusto as to border on imagination." It is not, indeed, a song, but the form of the poem will not account for its omission, since many of the verses selected by Mr. Caine, so far from being songs, are wholly destitute of the lyrical note. Such pieces, for example, as Pomfret's " Lines to a Friend," Walsh's " Epistle to a Lady," and Savage's " Verses to a Young Lady," have no rightful place in a volume of lyrics.

Reasons of space would fairly account for the absence of some poets who knew how to sing, were it not that their places are filled by third-rate versemen. There is not a piece here by Pomfret, by Granville, by Fenton, by Savage, by Soame Jenyns, by Lyttelton, by Jago. or by Whitehead, that has the royal mark of poetry, nor even the charm of fancy. We have no great opinion of Shenstone as a poet, and cannot agree with Dr. Johnson's high estimate of the following stanza from the " Pastoral Ballad ; " but there is more of song in it than in many of the rhyme-makers' verses honoured by Mr. Caine :-

"When forced the fair nymph to forego,

What anguish I felt at my heart!

Yet I thought—but it might not be so- 'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.

She gazed, as I slowly withdrew, My path I could hardly discern; So sweetly she bade me adieu,

I thought that she bade me return."

"The ship full fraught With gold far sought Though ne'er so wisely helmed, May suffer wrack

In sailing back,

By tempest overwhelmed.

Therefore boast not Your happy lot, Be silent now you have her ; The time I knew She slighted you, When I was in her favour.

None stand so fast But may be cast By Fortune and disgraced ; Once did I wear Her garter there Where you her glove have placed.

What now is thine Was only mine And first to me was given ; Thou laugh'st at me I laugh at thee And then we two are even.

But I'll not mourn But stay my turn ; The wind may come about, Sir, And once again May bring me in And help to bear you out, Sir."

Henry Carey, a contemporary of Shenstone, understood better than most poets of the period the art of song-writing. His admirable love-lyric, " Sally in our Alley," is not in this selection, possibly because the editor considered that it was too well known to quote ; but under the heading " Love's a Riddle," he gives these insignificant lines from Carey's pen :- " The flame of love assuages Consenting makes it colder,

When once it is revealed ; When met it will retreat ; But fiercer still it rages, Repulses make it bolder, The more it is concealed. And dangers make it sweet."

John Gay receives similar treatment from Mr. Caine. His famous song, "Black-Eyed Susan," is omitted, and the poet is represented by an " Address to a Rose," containing a rather

pretty but familiar conceit.

It is singular to observe how little several of our poets, as poets, have been affected by the passion of love. Despite his three wives, or perhaps on account of them, love as a personal

feeling, if we except the fine sonnet to his "late espoused saint," has no place in Milton's English verse, and Mr. Caine is forced to be content with a translation of one of his Italian sonnets. Addison, who writes dramatically of love in his " Rosamund," appears to be wholly free from the complaint; and amidst all the miscellaneous verse of Swift, who is classed among the poets for his clever rhymes, there is not a line of genuine emotion inspired by love. His friend Pope knew more about it, perhaps, by right of a poetical imagination denied to Swift, but his utterances on the subject in verse sound as unreal as they do in his letters ; and that his name is not to be found in Mr. Caine's treasury does not surprise us. Gray and Collins express no feeling of the kind in their poetry ; neither do Young or Akenside, for the stilted odes of the latter in which love is mentioned are wholly without emotion. A mathematician could not state a problem with greater calmness. Thomson, at the mature age of forty, seems to have cherished a real passion for Miss Young, but the few verses called forth by " Amanda " are of the tamest kind. He could describe a flower or a tree poetically, but not the lady of his heart. Truly, " the gentle god of soft desire," whom Thomson invoked, treated him very shabbily. With Cowper, a poet of the keenest sensibility, it would probably have been different, had not a " madness-cloud" darkened his life. He loved his cousin Theodora in his young days; she loved him with a true woman's constancy to the end, but after the dreadful event of 1763, love was no more to be thought of, and could therefore supply no theme for Cowper's song. But before that date, the poet's love did find utterance in verse. Mr. Caine says. with some truth, that he " wrote little which could with absolute and perfect suitability be included in a volume of amatorial verse ; " but with the strange perversity that so often leads him to reject poems that answer to the title of his volume, and to insert pieces that do not, he is content to print a poem addressed to a young lady, in which love has no place, and nine love lines of blank verse, when Cowper's contribu- tions to the Love-Songs might have included the following characteristic stanzas called " The Symptoms of Love," which are marked by the ease and grace that distinguish the poet's occasional verses :—

" Would my Delia know if I love, let her take

My last thought at night and the first when I wake ; With my prayers and best wishes preferred for her sake.

Let her guess what I muse on when rambling alone, I stride o'er the stubble each day with my gun, Never ready to shoot till the covey is flown.

Let her think what odd whimsies I have in my brain, When I read one page over and over again, And discover at last that I read it in vain.

Let her say why so fixed and so steady my look, Without ever regarding the person who spoke, Still affecting to laugh without hearing the joke.

Or why, when with pleasure her praises I hear (That sweetest of melody sure to my ear), I attend, and at once inattentive appear.

And lastly, when summoned to drink to my flame, Let her guess why I never once mention her name, Though herself and the woman I love are the same."

We lay down Mr. Caine's little volume with real regret that we cannot praise it more highly. It can never rank with the lyrical anthologies edited by Mr. Palgrave, by Mr. Locker- Lampson, or by Mr. Bullen ; but while its defects are more conspicuous than its merits, it must be added that its earlier and later pages contain much that is worthy of the illustrious poets of the sixteenth century, and of the poets who sang in the first half of the nineteenth.