‘In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs,
To quench the fever burning in my veins:
In vain (love’s pilgrim) mountains, dales, and plains
I over-run; vain help long absence brings.
In vain, my friends, your counsel me constrains
To fly, and place my thoughts on other things.
Ah, like the bird that fired hath her wings,
The more I move the greater are my pains.
Desire, alas! desire a Zeuxis new,
From the orient borrowing gold, from western skies
Heavenly cinnabar, sets before my eyes
In every place her hair, sweet look and hue;
That fly, run, rest I, all doth prove but vain;
My life lies in those eyes which have me slain.’

The other is a direct imitation of Petrarch’s description of the bower where he first saw Laura.

‘Alexis, here she stay’d, among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair:
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines;
Here sat she by these musked eglantines;
The happy flowers seem yet the print to bear:
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear.
She here me first perceiv’d, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face:
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
Here first I got a pledge of promised grace;
But ah! what serves to have been made happy so,
Sith passed pleasures double but new woe!’

I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond’s Sonnets to Spenser’s; and they leave Sidney’s, picking their way through verbal intricacies and ‘thorny queaches,’[34] at an immeasurable distance behind. Drummond’s other poems have great, though not equal merit; and he may be fairly set down as one of our old English classics.

Ben Jonson’s detached poetry I like much, as indeed I do all about him, except when he degraded himself by ‘the laborious foolery’ of some of his farcical characters, which he could not deal with sportively, and only made stupid and pedantic. I have been blamed for what I have said, more than once, in disparagement of Ben Jonson’s comic humour; but I think he was himself aware of his infirmity, and has (not improbably) alluded to it in the following speech of Crites in Cynthia’s Revels.

‘Oh, how despised and base a thing is man,
If he not strive to erect his groveling thoughts
Above the strain of flesh! But how more cheap,
When even his best and understanding part
(The crown and strength of all his faculties)
Floats like a dead-drown’d body, on the stream
Of vulgar humour, mix’d with common’st dregs:
I suffer for their guilt now; and my soul
(Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes)
Is hurt with mere intention on their follies.
Why will I view them then? my sense might ask me:
Or is’t a rarity or some new object
That strains my strict observance to this point:
But such is the perverseness of our nature,
That if we once but fancy levity,
(How antic and ridiculous soever
It suit with us) yet will our muffled thought
Chuse rather not to see it than avoid it, &c.’

Ben Jonson had self-knowledge and self-reflection enough to apply this to himself. His tenaciousness on the score of critical objections does not prove that he was not conscious of them himself, but the contrary. The greatest egotists are those whom it is impossible to offend, because they are wholly and incurably blind to their own defects; or if they could be made to see them, would instantly convert them into so many beauty-spots and ornamental graces. Ben Jonson’s fugitive and lighter pieces are not devoid of the characteristic merits of that class of composition; but still often in the happiest of them, there is a specific gravity in the author’s pen, that sinks him to the bottom of his subject, though buoyed up for a time with art and painted plumes, and produces a strange mixture of the mechanical and fanciful, of poetry and prose, in his songs and odes. For instance, one of his most airy effusions is the Triumph of his Mistress: yet there are some lines in it that seem inserted almost by way of burlesque. It is however well worth repeating.

‘See the chariot at hand here of love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws it is a swan or a dove;
And well the car love guideth!
As she goes all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty:
And enamour’d, do wish so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that love’s world compriseth!
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As love’s star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead’s smoother
Than words that soothe her:
And from her arch’d brows, such a grace
Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good of the elements’ strife.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
Before rude hands have touch’d it?
Ha’ you mark’d but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutch’d it?
Ha’ you felt the wool of beaver?
Or swan’s down ever?
Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the briar?
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
Oh, so white! Oh so soft! Oh so sweet is she!’

His Discourse with Cupid, which follows, is infinitely delicate and piquant, and without one single blemish. It is a perfect ‘nest of spicery.’

‘Noblest Charis, you that are
Both my fortune and my star!
And do govern more my blood,
Than the various moon the flood!
Hear, what late discourse of you,
Love and I have had; and true.
‘Mongst my Muses finding me,
Where he chanc’t your name to see
Set, and to this softer strain;
‘Sure,’ said he, ‘if I have brain,
This here sung can be no other,
By description, but my mother!
So hath Homer prais’d her hair;
So Anacreon drawn the air
Of her face, and made to rise,
Just about her sparkling eyes,
Both her brows, bent like my bow.
By her looks I do her know,
Which you call my shafts. And see!
Such my mother’s blushes be,
As the bath your verse discloses
In her cheeks, of milk and roses;
Such as oft I wanton in.
And, above her even chin,
Have you plac’d the bank of kisses,
Where you say, men gather blisses,
Rip’ned with a breath more sweet,
Than when flowers and west-winds meet.
Nay, her white and polish’d neck,
With the lace that doth it deck,
Is my mother’s! hearts of slain
Lovers, made into a chain!
And between each rising breast
Lies the valley, call’d my nest,
Where I sit and proyne my wings
After flight; and put new stings
To my shafts! Her very name
With my mother’s is the same.’—
‘I confess all,’ I replied,
‘And the glass hangs by her side,
And the girdle ‘bout her waste,
All is Venus: save unchaste.
But, alas! thou seest the least
Of her good, who is the best
Of her sex; but could’st thou, Love,
Call to mind the forms, that strove
For the apple, and those three
Make in one, the same were she.
For this beauty yet doth hide
Something more than thou hast spied.
Outward grace weak love beguiles:
She is Venus when she smiles,
But she’s Juno when she walks,
And Minerva when she talks.’

In one of the songs in Cynthia’s Revels, we find, amidst some very pleasing imagery, the origin of a celebrated line in modern poetry—

‘Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, &c.’

This has not even the merit of originality, which is hard upon it. Ben Jonson had said two hundred years before,

‘Oh, I could still
(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill)
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is now a wither’d daffodil.’

His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morrison, has been much admired, but I cannot but think it one of his most fantastical and perverse performances.

I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to such stanzas as these.

—‘Of which we priests and poets say
Such truths as we expect for happy men,
And there he lives with memory; and Ben

THE STAND

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went
Himself to rest,
Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have exprest,
In this bright asterism;
Where it were friendship’s schism
(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)
To separate these twi—
Lights, the Dioscori;
And keep the one half from his Harry.
But fate doth so alternate the design,
While that in Heaven, this light on earth doth shine.’

This seems as if because he cannot without difficulty write smoothly, he becomes rough and crabbed in a spirit of defiance, like those persons who cannot behave well in company, and affect rudeness to show their contempt for the opinions of others.

His Epistles are particularly good, equally full of strong sense and sound feeling. They shew that he was not without friends, whom he esteemed, and by whom he was deservedly esteemed in return. The controversy started about his character is an idle one, carried on in the mere spirit of contradiction, as if he were either made up entirely of gall, or dipped in ‘the milk of human kindness.’ There is no necessity or ground to suppose either. He was no doubt a sturdy, plain-spoken, honest, well-disposed man, inclining more to the severe than the amiable side of things; but his good qualities, learning, talents, and convivial habits preponderated over his defects of temper or manners; and in a course of friendship some difference of character, even a little roughness or acidity, may relish to the palate; and olives may be served up with effect as well as sweetmeats. Ben Jonson, even by his quarrels and jealousies, does not seem to have been curst with the last and damning disqualification for friendship, heartless indifference. He was also what is understood by a good fellow, fond of good cheer and good company: and the first step for others to enjoy your society, is for you to enjoy theirs. If any one can do without the world, it is certain that the world can do quite as well without him. His ‘verses inviting a friend to supper,’ give us as familiar an idea of his private habits and character as his Epistle to Michael Drayton, that to Selden, &c., his lines to the memory of Shakespear, and his noble prose eulogy on Lord Bacon, in his disgrace, do a favourable one.

Among the best of these (perhaps the very best) is the address to Sir Robert Wroth, which besides its manly moral sentiments, conveys a strikingly picturesque description of rural sports and manners at this interesting period.

‘How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth,
Whether by choice, or fate, or both!
And though so near the city and the court,
Art ta’en with neither’s vice nor sport:
That at great times, art no ambitious guest
Of sheriff’s dinner, or of mayor’s feast.
Nor com’st to view the better cloth of state;
The richer hangings, or the crown-plate;
Nor throng’st (when masquing is) to have a sight
Of the short bravery of the night;
To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit
There wasted, some not paid for yet!
But canst at home in thy securer rest,
Live with un-bought provision blest;
Free from proud porches or their guilded roofs,
‘Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs:
Along the curled woods and painted meads,
Through which a serpent river leads
To some cool courteous shade, which he calls his,
And makes sleep softer than it is!
Or if thou list the night in watch to break,
A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak,
In spring oft roused for their master’s sport,
Who for it makes thy house his court;
Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year,
Divid’st upon the lesser deer;
In autumn, at the partrich mak’st a flight,
And giv’st thy gladder guests the sight;
And in the winter hunt’st the flying hare,
More for thy exercise than fare;
While all that follows, their glad ears apply
To the full greatness of the cry:
Or hawking at the river or the bush,
Or shooting at the greedy thrush,
Thou dost with some delight the day out-wear,
Although the coldest of the year!
The whil’st the several seasons thou hast seen
Of flow’ry fields, of copses green,
The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep,
And feasts that either shearers keep;
The ripened ears yet humble in their height,
And furrows laden with their weight;
The apple-harvest that doth longer last;
The hogs return’d home fat from mast;
The trees cut out in log; and those boughs made
A fire now, that lent a shade!
Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites,
Comus puts in for new delights;
And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer,
As if in Saturn’s reign it were;
Apollo’s harp and Hermes’ lyre resound,
Nor are the Muses strangers found:
The rout of rural folk come thronging in,
(Their rudeness then is thought no sin)
Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace;
And the great heroes of her race
Sit mixt with loss of state or reverence.
Freedom doth with degree dispense.
The jolly wassail walks the often round,
And in their cups their cares are drown’d:
They think not then which side the cause shall leese,
Nor how to get the lawyer fees.
Such, and no other was that age of old,
Which boasts t’ have had the head of gold.
And such since thou canst make thine own content,
Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent.
Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand
The fury of a rash command,
Go enter breaches, meet the cannon’s rage,
That they may sleep with scars in age.
And show their feathers shot and colours torn,
And brag that they were therefore born.
Let this man sweat, and wrangle at the bar
For every price in every jar
And change possessions oftener with his breath,
Than either money, war or death:
Let him, than hardest sires, more disinherit,
And each where boast it as his merit,
To blow up orphans, widows, and their states;
And think his power doth equal Fate’s.
Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth,
Purchas’d by rapine, worse than stealth,
And brooding o’er it sit, with broadest eyes,
Not doing good, scarce when he dies.
Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win,
By being organs to great sin,
Get place and honour, and be glad to keep
The secrets, that shall breake their sleep:
And, so they ride in purple, eat in plate,
Though poyson, think it a great fate.
But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply,
Shalt neither that, nor this envy:
Thy peace is made; and, when man’s state is well,
’Tis better, if he there can dwell.
God wisheth none should wrack on a strange shelf;
To him man’s dearer than t’ himself.
And, howsoever we may think things sweet,
He alwayes gives what he knows meet;
Which who can use is happy: such be thou.
Thy morning’s and thy evening’s vow
Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find
A body sound, with sounder mind;
To do thy country service, thy self right;
That neither want do thee affright,
Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent,
Thou mayst think life a thing but lent.’

Of all the poetical Epistles of this period, however, that of Daniel to the Countess of Cumberland, for weight of thought and depth of feeling, bears the palm. The reader will not peruse this effusion with less interest or pleasure, from knowing that it is a favourite with Mr. Wordsworth.

‘He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear’d the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved pow’rs; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood: where honour, pow’r, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.
He looks upon the mightiest monarch’s wars
But only as on stately robberies;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-fac’d enterprize.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice, he sees (as if seduced) still
Conspires with pow’r, whose cause must not be ill.
He sees the face of right t’ appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man.
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,
To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.
He sees, that let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.
Nor is he mov’d with all the thunder-cracks
Of tyrants’ threats, or with the surly brow
Of pow’r, that proudly sits on others’ crimes:
Charg’d with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow
Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him; that hath no side at all,
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.
Although his heart (so near ally’d to earth)
Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distress’d mortality,
That thus make way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon imbecility:
Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.
And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompass’d; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceived; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th’ inheritance of desolation leaves
To great expecting hopes: he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety.’

Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion is a work of great length and of unabated freshness and vigour in itself, though the monotony of the subject tires the reader. He describes each place with the accuracy of a topographer, and the enthusiasm of a poet, as if his Muse were the very genius loci. His Heroical Epistles are also excellent. He has a few lighter pieces, but none of exquisite beauty or grace. His mind is a rich marly soil that produces an abundant harvest, and repays the husbandman’s toil, but few flaunting flowers, the garden’s pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds.

P. Fletcher’s Purple Island is nothing but a long enigma, describing the body of a man, with the heart and veins, and the blood circulating in them, under the fantastic designation of the Purple Island.

The other Poets whom I shall mention, and who properly belong to the age immediately following, were William Brown, Carew, Crashaw, Herrick, and Marvell. Brown was a pastoral poet, with much natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical quaintness and prolixity. Carew was an elegant court-trifler. Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps more fancy than feeling, though he has been called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and erroneous in both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as a true poet as well as patriot, not in the best of times.—I will, however, give short specimens from each of these writers, that the reader may judge for himself; and be led by his own curiosity, rather than my recommendation, to consult the originals. Here is one by T. Carew.

‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose:
For in your beauties, orient deep
These flow’rs, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love, Heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more, whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more, where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become, as in their sphere.
Ask me no more, if east or west
The phœnix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.’

The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on Lady Mary Villiers, and the Friendly Reproof to Ben Jonson for his angry Farewell to the stage, are in the author’s best manner. We may perceive, however, a frequent mixture of the superficial and common-place, with far-fetched and improbable conceits.

Herrick is a writer who does not answer the expectations I had formed of him. He is in a manner a modern discovery, and so far has the freshness of antiquity about him. He is not trite and threadbare. But neither is he likely to become so. He is a writer of epigrams, not of lyrics. He has point and ingenuity, but I think little of the spirit of love or wine. From his frequent allusion to pearls and rubies, one might take him for a lapidary instead of a poet. One of his pieces is entitled

‘The Rock of Rubies, and the Quarry of Pearls.
Some ask’d me where the rubies grew;
And nothing I did say;
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.
Some ask’d how pearls did grow, and where;
Then spoke I to my girl
To part her lips, and shew them there
The quarrelets of pearl.’

Now this is making a petrefaction both of love and poetry.

His poems, from their number and size, are ‘like the motes that play in the sun’s beams;’ that glitter to the eye of fancy, but leave no distinct impression on the memory. The two best are a translation of Anacreon, and a successful and spirited imitation of him.

‘The Wounded Cupid.
Cupid, as he lay among
Roses, by a bee was stung.
Whereupon, in anger flying
To his mother said thus, crying,
Help, oh help, your boy’s a dying!
And why, my pretty lad? said she.
Then, blubbering, replied he,
A winged snake has bitten me,
Which country-people call a bee.
At which she smiled; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears,
Alas, said she, my wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is;
Come, tell me then, how great’s the smart
Of those thou woundest with thy dart?’

The Captive Bee, or the Little Filcher, is his own.

‘As Julia once a slumbering lay,
It chanced a bee did fly that way,
After a dew or dew-like show’r,
To tipple freely in a flow’r.
For some rich flow’r he took the lip
Of Julia, and began to sip:
But when he felt he suck’d from thence
Honey, and in the quintessence;
He drank so much he scarce could stir;
So Julia took the pilferer.
And thus surpris’d, as filchers use,
He thus began himself to excuse:
Sweet lady-flow’r! I never brought
Hither the least one thieving thought;
But taking those rare lips of yours
For some fresh, fragrant, luscious flow’rs,
I thought I might there take a taste,
Where so much syrup ran at waste:
Besides, know this, I never sting
The flow’r that gives me nourishing;
But with a kiss or thanks, do pay
For honey that I bear away.
This said, he laid his little scrip
Of honey ‘fore her ladyship:
And told her, as some tears did fall,
That that he took, and that was all.
At which she smil’d, and bid him go,
And take his bag, but thus much know,
When next he came a pilfering so,
He should from her full lips derive
Honey enough to fill his hive.’

Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise, as appears to me his due, on another occasion: but the public are deaf, except to proof or to their own prejudices, and I will therefore give an example of the sweetness and power of his verse.

‘To his Coy Mistress.
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Should’st rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should shew your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity:
And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d pow’r.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.’

In Brown’s Pastorals, notwithstanding the weakness and prolixity of his general plan, there are repeated examples of single lines and passages of extreme beauty and delicacy, both of sentiment and description, such as the following Picture of Night.

‘Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd’s song,
And silence girt the woods: no warbling tongue
Talk’d to the echo; Satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance,
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept;
And little gales that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer’s dust, in fearful whisp’rings stirr’d,
As loth to waken any singing bird.’

Poetical beauties of this sort are scattered, not sparingly, over the green lap of nature through almost every page of our author’s writings. His description of the squirrel hunted by mischievous boys, of the flowers stuck in the windows like the hues of the rainbow, and innumerable others might be quoted.

His Philarete (the fourth song of the Shepherd’s Pipe) has been said to be the origin of Lycidas: but there is no resemblance, except that both are pastoral elegies for the loss of a friend. The Inner Temple Mask has also been made the foundation of Comus, with as little reason. But so it is: if an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after: and every writer that finds an ingenious or partial editor, will be made to set up his claim of originality against him. A more serious charge of this kind has been urged against the principal character in Paradise Lost (that of Satan), which is said to have been taken from Marino, an Italian poet. Of this, we may be able to form some judgment, by a comparison with Crashaw’s translation of Marino’s Sospetto d’Herode. The description of Satan alluded to, is given in the following stanzas:

‘Below the bottom of the great abyss,
There where one centre reconciles all things,
The world’s profound heart pants; there placed is
Mischief’s old master; close about him clings
A curl’d knot of embracing snakes, that kiss
His correspondent cheeks; these loathsome strings
Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties
Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies.
The judge of torments, and the king of tears,
He fills a burnish’d throne of quenchless fire;
And for his old fair robes of light, he wears
A gloomy mantle of dark flames; the tire
That crowns his hated head, on high appears;
Where seven tall horns (his empire’s pride) aspire;
And to make up hell’s majesty, each horn
Seven crested hydras horribly adorn.
His eyes, the sullen dens of death and night,
Startle the dull air with a dismal red;
Such his fell glances as the fatal light
Of staring comets, that look kingdoms dead.
From his black nostrils and blue lips, in spite
Of hell’s own stink, a worser stench is spread.
His breath hell’s lightning is; and each deep groan
Disdains to think that heaven thunders alone.
His flaming eyes’ dire exhalation
Unto a dreadful pile gives fiery breath;
Whose unconsum’d consumption preys upon
The never-dying life of a long death.
In this sad house of slow destruction
(His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath
A mass of woes; his teeth for torment gnash,
While his steel sides sound with his tail’s strong lash.’

This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal the grandeur of Milton’s description.

——‘His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than archangel ruin’d and the excess
Of glory obscured.’

Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar and physical insignia of the devil, and clothed him with other greater and intellectual terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and converting the grotesque and deformed into the ideal and classical. Certainly Milton’s mind rose superior to all others in this respect, on the outstretched wings of philosophic contemplation, in not confounding the depravity of the will with physical distortion, or supposing that the distinctions of good and evil were only to be subjected to the gross ordeal of the senses. In the subsequent stanzas, we however find the traces of some of Milton’s boldest imagery, though its effect is injured by the incongruous mixture above stated.

‘Struck with these great concurrences of things,[35]
Symptoms so deadly unto death and him;
Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings
Eternally bind each rebellious limb.
He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings,
Which like two bosom’d sails[36] embrace the dim
Air, with a dismal shade, but all in vain;
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain.
While thus heav’n’s highest counsels, by the low
Footsteps of their effects, he traced too well,
He tost his troubled eyes, embers that glow
Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell.
With his foul claws he fenced his furrow’d brow,
And gave a ghastly shriek, whose horrid yell
Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of night.’

The poet adds—

‘The while his twisted tail he knaw’d for spite.’

There is no keeping in this. This action of meanness and mere vulgar spite, common to the most contemptible creatures, takes away from the terror and power just ascribed to the prince of Hell, and implied in the nature of the consequences attributed to his every movement of mind or body. Satan’s soliloquy to himself is more beautiful and more in character at the same time.

‘Art thou not Lucifer? he to whom the droves
Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given?
The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves?
The fairest and the first-born smile of Heav’n?
Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves,
Reverently circled by the lesser seven:
Such and so rich the flames that from thine eyes
Opprest the common people of the skies?
Ah! wretch! what boots it to cast back thine eyes
Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shews?’ &c.

This is true beauty and true sublimity: it is also true pathos and morality: for it interests the mind, and affects it powerfully with the idea of glory tarnished, and happiness forfeited with the loss of virtue: but from the horns and tail of the brute-demon, imagination cannot reascend to the Son of the morning, nor be dejected by the transition from weal to woe, which it cannot, without a violent effort, picture to itself.

In our author’s account of Cruelty, the chief minister of Satan, there is also a considerable approach to Milton’s description of Death and Sin, the portress of hell-gates.

‘Thrice howl’d the caves of night, and thrice the sound,
Thundering upon the banks of those black lakes,
Rung through the hollow vaults of hell profound:
At last her listening ears the noise o’ertakes,
She lifts her sooty lamps, and looking round,
A general hiss,[37] from the whole tire of snakes
Rebounding through hell’s inmost caverns came,
In answer to her formidable name.
‘Mongst all the palaces in hell’s command,
No one so merciless as this of hers,
The adamantine doors forever stand
Impenetrable, both to prayers and tears.
The wall’s inexorable steel, no hand
Of time, or teeth of hungry ruin fears.’

On the whole, this poem, though Milton has undoubtedly availed himself of many ideas and passages in it, raises instead of lowering our conception of him, by shewing how much more he added to it than he has taken from it.

Crashaw’s translation of Strada’s description of the Contention between a nightingale and a musician, is elaborate and spirited, but not equal to Ford’s version of the same story in his Lover’s Melancholy. One line may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, and of Crashaw’s style in general.