characteristic motto, Quid tu si pereo. refers to his offence with bold sincerity. griefe,' he declares, 'is that I was so sparing.' He complains that 'Want of power and friends be my confusion,' and that 'My foe unto particulars would tie What I intended universally.' The poem, which shows great command of rhyme and metre, is lacking in polish; but in his satires generally, as in his later poems, we miss the happiness of touch and finished freshness, and above all the melody, of Faire Virtue, Mistress of Philarete.' Wither fell a victim to his fatal facility. But, though we may prefer his affable Looke to encourage Honesty" to his wearing of the 'sterne Frowne to cast on Villainie,' we cannot but admire the unflinching bravery of his petition for release, and the charm. of that other note, almost unsounded hitherto in English poetry: 'Here can I live and play with miserie . . Here have I learned to make my greatest wrongs Sir John Denham does not owe his position 1615-1688. in English literature to his satires. He had at the best but a thin vein of cynical wit, which was soon exhausted. He affects to be a humorous writer, but when he attempts the ludicrous he generally fails. When he tries to be witty, he usually succeeds only in being dull, coarse, or disgusting. His Directions to a Painter,' an imitation of Waller's Instructions,' is said by Pepys to have 'made my heart ache, being too sharp and so true'; but both this and the ' Petition to the Five Members 1 Preface to 'Epithalamion.' 2 'And need I now thus to apologize 3 Diary,' September 14, 1667. 1582-1635. 1618-1667. set the modern reader wondering, between his yawns, at the esteem in which Denham's comic vein was held by his contemporaries. His satires are, in fact, merely coarse squibs and bad lampoons. Bishop Corbet is a more interesting figure in the history of English satire. He writes in the light Horatian vein, and in his longest piece imitates Horace's 'Journey to Brundusium.' Corbet wrote, without elaboration, for the amusement of the moment. His rough ballads aim at no smoothness of versification. They are obviously trifles thrown off in the intervals of more serious business. In spite of this carelessness, Corbet is of some importance, because in adopting as he does the ballad metres for his light-hearted rebukes of the follies of the age, he stands out as the forerunner of those other writers of witty vers de société, in whom satire finds its least serious and its gentlest exponents. Abraham Cowley gave promise of much satiric power in the play Love's Riddle,' written while still a 'King's Scholler in Westminster Schoole'; and from the boy poet who could ask to be preserved 'From singing men's religion, who are Always at church, just like the crows, cause there He we expect much. But, though we find in his other 1 same error deeper slide.' This becomes intensely wearisome when worked out through the whole Roman Catholic Creed. His touch is not sure; but his versification, though often lame, occasionally approaches the perfection of a Popian couplet.1 Our verdict on him may perhaps be rendered in the Tacitean formula: Capax saturæ, nisi scripsisset. Lord Herbert of Cherbury is one of Donne's 1581-1648. earliest disciples, and in his two satires, more than elsewhere, he betrays the influence of his master. Mr. Churton Collins has recently vindicated Lord Herbert's claim to the rank of poet, but of his satiric works he can only find heart to say that the second would disgrace Taylor the waterpoet; the first, though intolerably harsh and barbarous in style and rhythm, contains some interesting remarks.' There is little more to be said. His versification, distinguished in his other poems for sweetness and originality, in his satires is uncouth in the extreme. The matter is both obscure and trivial. John Cleveland shares with Donne the charge of 1613-1658. being fanciful and obscure. Like Brome an ardent Royalist, he followed the fates of distressed loyalty,' his biographers tell us. His love poems are marked by wearisome conceits and absurd exaggerations. The cynical note is never absent. As a satirist, he carried on a kind of guerilla 1 'Character of an Holy Sister': 'She that will sit in shop for five hours' space, Damn at first sight, and proudly dare to say That hang religion in a naked ear, And judge men's hearts according to their hair.' 2 See his edition of the poet. 3 Alexander Brome fought manfully for the royal cause with his rough but effective political songs throughout the Protectorship. warfare with the enemies of his king and party. His poems relating to State affairs are coarse and profane, and are only saved from insincerity by his fine loathing of Puritans, Rebels and Scotchmen. His prose, as, for instance, in the Character of a London Diurnal,' is in the style of wit affected by Mercutio, and, like his verse, it is overcrowded with images.1 Rough and careless though his work is, it yet has many of the qualities of Hudibras.' But even when we come across phrases that are final, needles of wit in bundles of failures, these seem to be the offspring of accident, rather than of care. When he exclaims in The Rebel Scot': 'Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts! How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts !' we recognise the origin of that manner which was developed by Butler's patience and laborious persistency. But Cleveland, lacking the application which made Butler an artist in raillery, remained merely a witty roysterer, a clever amateur. 1620-1678. Lord Beaconsfield maintained that Lord Shelburne was one of the suppressed characters of history. If we admit that there are suppressed characters in literature, as in politics, Andrew Marvell may be called the Shelburne of English letters. In the days of Charles II. two men, Butler and Marvell, made satiric writing once more a powerful weapon. But the satires of the Puritan writer, though admired and feared in their day, have met with unjust oblivion. The liveliest droll of the age,' as Burnet calls him, a man of pleasing and festive wit, Marvell excelled in the use of that 1 Cleveland was also the author of 'The Rustick Rampant'— a long pamphlet on the Insurrection of Wat Tyler, full of obvious satiric references to the Civil Wars of his own day. ironical banter in which Swift and Junius were his most apt pupils; but in him, for reasons not altogether unconnected, perhaps, with politics, the lyric poet has survived the satiric writer. He fought on the losing side. 'Fleckno,' his earliest satire, droll if unpolished, is a revolt against the Jesuits; and his later poems are all in the character of the Puritan, attacking, as became the friend and assistant of Milton, tyranny and wickedness in Church and State. The strength and dignity of his position as an incorruptible member of the Opposition in the corrupt and servile Parliament of Charles II. are reflected alike in his fearless poems and in his more perfect pamphlets. In 1653 was produced 'The Character of Holland -'that scarce deserves the name of land.' The irresponsible frivolity, the unpremeditated style, the ludicrous exaggerations of this piece remind us of the 'excellent wit' of Butler, of which he himself speaks so generously.1 But beneath these qualities there is also a feeling of true patriotism, which raises the tone above that of Hudibras.' His point of view, we feel, is not that of Cleveland, of Oldham, or, to say truth, of Dryden. On the fall of Clarendon,2 Marvell, who, whilst aiming at the King's evil counsellors, always maintained his loyalty to the King, produced a long and weighty impeachment of those who led the King astray. His 'Last Instructions to a Painter' is modelled, indeed, upon the pieces by Denham and Waller, but is vastly superior to them, although the interest it arouses is now mainly historical. If the attack on the Duchess of York3 be something too fierce, the lines describing the King1 must be admitted to rise to a great height of solemn poetry, full of im 1 'The Rehearsal Transprosed.' 2 September, 1667. Ibid., 11. 837-880. |