SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY Si IJDIE S.* SEVERAL of these Studies appeared originally

in the pages of the Cornbill Magazine, at the time when, under the manage- ment of Mr. Leslie Stephen, it was, perhaps, the most literary of our monthly periodicals. They are the fruit of much reading and thought, and deserve welcome as a genuine addition to that criticism of forgotten authors which is often more attractive than the works which have suggested it.

The fault into which the essayist of unfamiliar subjects is likely to fall is obvious, and perhaps pardonable. He is liable to think more of his theme than its merits may justly claim, and, in breaking new ground, to estimate its richness by the labour it has cost him.. Some of the ground ploughed by Mr. Gosse is, however,.far from new. Here, for instance, is a charmingly-written paper on Robert Herrick, who, though at one time neglected, is now well known to every student of poetry. All that Mr. Gosse has to say about this purely lyrical poet is full of interest, and occasionally his com- ment is not only good, but new; as, for example, when he notes the influence the Masques of Ben Jonson had upon Herrick. How much he honoured Ben, and how he exulted in belonging to his "tribe," is a familiar fact iu his history. If he learnt even to sing from him in the measure that poet learns from poet, it may have been from Jonson also that he first caught the love of those rural delights which both men have described so well. In this respect he is superior to his master. Jonson's love of the country is expressed in more general terms, but Herrick, as Mr. Gosse says truly, "was the earliest English poet to see the picturesqueness of lonely country life, and all his little landscapes are exquisitely delicate. No one has ever known better than Herrick how to seize, with- out effort and yet to absolute perfection, the pretty points of modern pastoral life,"—

" Loudon my home is though by hard fate sent

Into a long and irksome banishment,"

is the poet's complaint, yet there is not a verse be has written in praise of open-air delights and rustic pastimes that does not

• Seventeenth-Century Studies: a Contrthntion to the History of English Poetry. By Edmund W. (lone. London : Kogan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1883.

bear the stamp of sincerity. One omission the critic does well to note. Herrick's landscapes are without background. "He is photographically minute in giving us the features of the brook at our feet, the farmyard and its inmates, the open fire-place and the chimney-corner, but there is no trace of anything beyond, and the beautiful distances of Devonshire, the rocky tors, the rugged line of Dartmoor, the glens in the hills,—of all these there is not a trace." It was no doubt the human element in the life he witnessed at Dean Prior that chiefly attracted Herrick. He was a born voluptuary, keen in his sense of enjoyment, and, pagan-like, lamenting the brevity of life. In his love-lyrics, there is no indication of passionate love, though many signs of exquisite delight in a girl's external charms, of colour, of movement, and

of dress. Hazlitt has pointed out that in describing his mis-

tresses, he has the passion of a lapidary for precious stones; and Mr. Gosse, too, observes that the Hesperides is "like a box full of all sorts of jewels." May not this habit of seeking in a jeweller's shop for objects which remind him of Julia's eyes, Corinna's lips, and Anthea's teeth, be due to the homely fact that in his youth Herrick was apprenticed to his uncle, a rich goldsmith, of Wood Street ?

It is a change to turn from Herrick, with his cry of

"While Fate permits us, let's be merry, Cross all we must the fatal ferry,"

'to the devout, mystical Crasbaw, whose affections seem, if his rapturously pious verses speak truly, to have no taint of earth- liness about them. His father, Vicar of Whitechapel, and

preacher at the Temple, was a strong controversialist, who published many tracts and sermons on the errors of Rome. Richard was a boy when he died, and the in- fluence of the ultra-Protestant parent probably died with him. At all events, other and stronger influences were before long to prevail. When a scholar of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he became acquainted with the community at Little Gidding, and sympathised warmly with the saintly but ascetic piety of George Herbert's friend. Ferrer died in the English Church, and Mr. Gosse thinks it probable that if the civil war had not broken out, Crashaw might have lived and died in it also. Its sobriety, however, was unfitted for men who, like Ferrer and his dis- ciples, sought to raise the soul by a contempt for the wants of the body, and by a round of devotions as unceasing as the pro- gress of the seasons. Crashaw'a tendencies towards Rome are seen before he left the Anglican Communion. The "Hymn to St. Teresa," "written when the author was yet among the Pro- testants," shows the intense fervour of a nature more capable of 'ecstatic devotion than of thoughtful piety. There are glowing lines ia the poem. He has learnt from Teresa's books that love is eloquence, and asks whether her praise, timed so high to other tongues, might not speak English also :—

" Souls are not Spaniards too ; one friendly flood

Of baptism blends them all into one blood ; Christ's faith makes but one body of all souls, • And love's that body's soul ; no law controls Our free traffic for Heaven; we may maintain Peace, sure, with piety, though it come from' Spain.

What soul soe'er in any language can Speak Heaven like hers, is my soul's countryman."

In a poem written afterwards on the same saint, called "The Flaming Heart," he rises to a higher strain. Indeed, among his sacred poems, this is Crashaw's masterpiece, and as such has been often quoted. In this piece, and many others, if he some- times rises to a considerable height, his notes are seldom sus- tained, and his taste, like that of Donne and of his friend Cowley, is often execrable. A poem on "Mary Magdalen," describes her tears with the fantastic ingenuity then mistaken for wit, and pictures' the Saviour straying among the Galilean

mountains,- " . • . . followed by two faithful fountains, Two walking baths, two weeping motions, Portable and compendious oceans."

This is not an uncommon instance of the flaws which mar the old poet's work ; but at the same time, the reader is rewarded often by passages of rare loveliness. From one little poem on Lessias's "Rule of Health," we must quote a few lines, partly for the sake of the rarely beautiful couplet we have marked in italics :—

"Hark hither, reader, would'at thou see Nature her own physician be ? Wonld'st see a man all his own wealth, His own music, his own health ? A man whose sober soul can tell How to wear her garments well ? A happy soul that all the way To Heaven hath a summer's day.

Would'st see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile Age ? Would'at see December smile ?

Would'at see a nest of roses grow In a bed of reverend snow ?

Warm thoughts, free spirits, flattering Winter's self into a Spring ?

In sum, wouldst see a man that can Live to be old, and still a man ?

Whose latest and most leaden hours Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers ; And when Life's sweet fable ends, His soul and body part like friends: No quarrels, murmurs, no delay : A kiss, a sigh, and so away ?

This rare one, reader, would'at thou see,

Hark hither; and thyself be he."

The poetical work of Crashaw is as palpable as his defects, and Mr. Gosse's judicious study of the poet whose life inspired John Inglesant is fruitful in knowledge and suggestiveness. It may be observed here, however, that Mr. Goose sometimes ex- changes the moderation of criticism for a high-flown utterance

of admiration, more conspicuous for sound than meaning. It maybe true that Crashaw never rises to the " thrillingtenderness " of Donne, but what does the reader learn from the following ex- cruciating amplification of that statement :—" Crashaw never pants out a line and a half which leave us fainting and throb- bing, as if the heart of humanity itself had been revealed to us for a moment ; with all his flying colour and lambent flame, Crashaw is not Donne '' P Qr, again, turning to the paper on Etherege, we venture to ask whether the writer had any definite meaning when he describes the hand of the dramatist throwing in light touches "in a key of rose-colour on pale gray P" Eccentricities such as these may be forgiven to youth- ful poets, and to critics who live on the credit of unmanly affecta- tions, but Mr. Gosse has sufficient culture and experience to know the virtue of simplicity.

Cowley's name is better known than that of his friend Crashaw, although probably his poems are not more familiar. "Who now reads Cowley ?" was the question asked by Pope seventy years after the poet had been buried with much pomp in Westminster Abbey ; and it is a question that may be asked still. He was a true poet, but his love of pedantic in- genuity which Mr. Gosse traces to the personal training and example of Dr. Henry More, has obscured the poetic light that shines in his poems, and has, indeed, destroyed his reputation. "The taste for these ingennities and paradoxical turns of thought came like a disease and passed away," a remark of the critic which may some day be applied to a school of modern versemen, whose subtleties of language, especially when writing of love, are more noticeable than the inspiration which alone gives vitality to poetry. One of Cowley's finest poems, the ex- pression of true feeling, is an elegy on the death of Crashaw; and another on the death of his dearest friend, "the truest friend on earth," William Harvey, contains some noble stanzas. The earliest poems written in his precocious boyhood have some beautifully simple lines. The poem called "The Wish," written at thirteen, like a piece with the same title produced in later years, is remarkable for its terseness and simplicity. The Chronicle, in which he recounts the charms of a number of mistresses, who one by one captivate his heart, is a delightful play of fancy, but of fancy only, for Cowley is said never to have been in love: He confesses, indeed, that he could not under- atand women :—

"I know not what the learned may see, But they're strange Hebrew things to me."

To Cowley, as Mr. Gosse observes, "is due the praise of in- venting or introducing a style of ode which was a new thing in modern literature, and which took firm hold of our poetry, until in Collins it received its apotheosis and death-blow." These odes, which he called "Pindaric," like the larger number of odes imitated from this model, can with difficulty be read. The critic also points out what we had not previously observed, that the variation of the heroic couplet with occasional Alex-

andrines, used so frequently by Dryden, was another innovation introduced by Cowley. If, by the way, the student takes up Cowley's poems for that purpose,he will be surprised to find how often his thoughts have suggested similar thoughts or modes

of expression to other poets. Pope, more than once, we believe, takes his very words, and is it possible to doubt that Longfellow had read the following couplet P-

" "Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze,

The stars of earth no wonder in us raise."

The reason why Cowley was the most popular poet of his age, and why he is now forgotten, Mr. Gosse endeavours to explain, but we think he does not quite make out his case. He attri- butes to him alone the doubtful honour of inaugurating the reign of didactic and rhetorical poetry in England, and. observes that Dryden, "with assimilative genius of the most marvellous kind, was to tarnish the glory of Cowley by sheer superiority of imita- tion;" and also that, "from Cowley to Darwin, all the poets made oratorical effect take the place of the observation and inspired interpretation of nature." This latter statement is generally, although not wholly, accurate, for surely Thomson, after his fashion, did interpret Nature poetically. Unless it be from the superior weight and greatness of Dryden, Mr. Gosse does not make it clear why, in an age like that of Pope, this rhetorical poet ceased to be read. We doubt whether either Dryden's imitation, in the first place, or his vast superiority, in the second, sufficed to make Cowley unreadable. We believe, on the con- trary, this was due then, as tow, to the eccentricity and obscurity after which belaboured so passionately. The poets humours suited his age, since his wit made them popular ; they aid not suit the next, which, although eveh more rhetorical, had other humours of its own. It is a common-place to say that all true and per- manent art must be foxinded upon Nature, but it is one of those truths which the potent influence of fashion in literature makes the poet liable to forget.

Unwillingly, we must pass by with a simple note of admira- tion Mr. Gosse's essays on Thomas Lodge, John Webster, and the Matchless Orinda, who, "for half a century, was an un- questioned light in English song." On these topics the author has bestowed much labour, and new facts have rewarded his research. The last two chapters are devoted to Etherege and Otway. We think he overrates the unhappy author of Venice Preserved; if he does not exaggerate the dramatic skill of Etherege, Mr. Gosse is far too lenient to his shameless im- purity. The play specially praised by the critic, She Would if She Could, is as gross as the Plain Dealer of Wycherley, if not as the Limberhant of Dryden ; not only is the comedy destitute of a single virtuous character, but, with a single exception, there is not even the pretence of virtue. And the pretence on the part of Lady Cockwood is of the faintest kind. Mr. Gores asserts that she is a woman of loud, religious pretensions, who demands respect and devotion for her piety, but this is a mistake. Her strongest expressions of morality are confined to the assertion of virtuous principles and innocent intentions. Right and wrong, then, are not brought into contrast in this play. It is a brilliant but coarse representation of intrigue as the sole business of fine gentlemen and ladies. "The plot of so slight a thing," says Mr. Gosse, "is a gossamer fabric, and scarcely bears analysis ; but the comedy was by far the most sprightly performance at that time presented to any audience in Europe, save that which was listening to MoUre The grateful town accepted it with enthusiasm, and its author was the most popular of the hour." It is difficult to imagine a condition of English society in which such scenes and songs as occur in this play could be represented and sung in public. Pepys testifies to its popularity, observing that though he was at the playhouse by two o'clock, there were one thou- sand people put back who could not have room in the pit. He tells us that his wife was there, and observes with some inconsistency that the play was. blamed as si "silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish and witty." Mr. Gosse does his best to show the bright side of a coniedv that, from a moral point of view, is without a redeem- ing passage, and be considers "the entire neglect of Etherege's three plays is an unworthy return for the singular part they enjoyed in the creation of modern English comedy." We think the neglect is justified and explained. Like Wycherley, like Congreve, like Dryden in his capacity of dramatist, Etherege was content to write for the most dissolute age in English histo7. He gained the reward he sought, and as much as he deserved, in

the popularity of his own day. "