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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
THE TYPES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF
profcjijsor ?^iniam 3t. Jlieiljion
THE POPULAR BALLAD. By Professor Francis B. Gummere
of Haverford College.
THE LITERATURE OF ROGUERY. By Professor F. W.
Chandler of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
TRAGEDY. By Professor A. H. Thorndike of Columbia Uni-
versity.
THE ENGLISH LYRIC. By Professor Felix E. Schelling of
the University of Pennsylvania.
IN PRE PA RA TION
THE PASTORAL. By Professor Jefferson B. Fletcher of Co-
lumbia University.
THE ALLEGORY. By Professor William A. Neilsoh of Harvard
University.
LITERARY CRITICISM. By Professor Irving Babbitt of Har-
vard University.
THE SHORT STORY, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN. By Pro-
fessor W. M. Hart of the University of California.
THE MAS'",UE. By Professor J. W. Cunliffe of the University
of Wisciiusin.
THE SAINTS' LEGENDS. By G. H. Gerould, Preceptor in
Princeton University.
CHARACTER WRITING. By Professor Chester N. Greenough
of the University of Illinois.
THE NOVEL. By Professor J. D. M. Ford of Harvard Uni-
versity.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York
Cfte €ppc^ of <!SngIi^lj literature
EDITED BY
WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON
THE ENGLISH LYRIC
BY
FELIX E. SCHELLING
COPYRIGHT, I913, BY FELIX E. SCHELLING
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published March iqtj
TO
MY FELLOW-LOVERS OF LITERATURE
AND LABORERS IN HER FIELDS
THE MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PREFACE
In the following account of the English Lyric, its origin in
early times and its progress through the ages to our day,
I have endeavored to write always from impressions,
renewed, direct, and made at first hand. But it would be
madness in these days of commentary not to know as
much as possible of the wise and the unwise things that
have been said by those who have traversed this fascinat-
ing path before me. Independence of judgment, even
though it lead to singularity at times, is the most precious
right of criticism; but a becoming respect for fellow-
workers is alike courteous and judicious.
It was my original intention to include, in this book on
the English lyric, a chapter on the lyrical poets of our
American Commonwealth and the colonies of the mother
country, whether they spread over new continents or dot
far distant seas. This seemed the more desirable as it is a
canon of my faith that language alone is the criterion of
literary unity, wherewith the accidents of political union
or severance have little to do. On trial, however, it was
soon clear tliat a treatment of our American authors
which could satisfy alike the exacting claims of neighbor-
hood and reasonable proi)ortion was quite impossible; and
the plan was abandoned. It is as yet contrary to the
traditions of criticism to treat of American writers as a
viii PREFACE
part and parcel of the literature of our common race.
The acceptance of this rule of practice lightens materially
the task of British critics; while it enables those American
born to draw their portraits of our own authors on a scale,
at times, of disproportioned importance. In a general
history of poetry in the English tongue, however minute,
Thomas Pringle is mentionable for one poem which
Coleridge had the discernment to single out for praise.
In an anthology of South African verse, Pringle dilates
into a considerable figure, "the father of South African
poetry." This case is extreme; and yet the parallel is
not wholly misleading. "A single chapter in a book of
any size in which to treat Bryant, Whittier, Emerson,
Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Poe, Whitman, Lanier, and
Aldrich!" exclaims a fellow-countryman in dismay; while
the London critic superciliously asks in cool print: "Has
America produced a poet?" Who is to say? Who can
draw with the object so out of focus?
The bibliography, in a volume dealing with so many
names, can make no attempt at completeness. All refer-
ences to editions of single authors and, for the most part,
criticism referable to individuals, has been rigorously
omitted. References to current detailed bibliographies,
such as those of The Cambridge History of English Lit-
erature, should suffice even for the student. On the other
hand, an attempt has been made to include a large
number of titles of lyrical anthologies with their attend-
ant introductions and to supply the titles of the more
important books dealing with the lyric as such.
PREFACE k
I acknowledge my special indebtedness to the several
valuable articles of my friend and colleague, Professor
Cornelius Weygandt, on contemporary poets in The
Sewanee Review, The Alumni Register of the University
of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. I regret that his book,
Irish Plays and Playwrights, now in the hands of the
printer, was not available for my use before the comple-
tion of my text. The second chapter of this book owes
much to the critical suggestion of another friend and col-
league. Professor Clarence G. Child. Still other helps
and encouragement have also been mine, as always, at
the hands of others of the Department of English; whilst
last, though by no means least, I record with pleasure
the courteous and always capable supervision of Pro-
fessor W. A. Neilson, the general editor of this series.
F. E. S.
Untvebsity of Pennsylvania, January, 1913.
CONTENTS
I. Definitions 1
n. The Medieval Lyric 9
in. Lyrical, Poetry in the England of the Tudors 31
IV. The Lyric in the Reigns of the First Two
Stuart Monarchs 73
V. The Lyrical Decline ; from the Restoration
to the Death of Cowper 112
VI. The Lyric and the Romantic Revival . . . 149
VII. The Victorian Lyrists 194
VIII. Some Successors of Swinburne and Meredith 2C4
Bibliography 301
Index 321
THE ENGLISH LYRIC
CHAPTER I
DEFINITIONS
|HE primary' conception involved in the term,
"lyric" has always to do with song; and it is',
the song-like quality of the lyric that falls |
I most conspicuously into contrast with the
epic or telling quality of narrative verse. But this kin-
ship of the lyric with song involves another important
contrast. When Aristotle declared music the most imi-
tative of the arts, he meant that music reflected more
directly the feelings and passions of men than words
which, however poetic, can merely describe or symbolic-
ally express them. So, too, the lyric is concerned with
the poet, his thoughts, his emotions, his moods, and his
passions. In the lyric the individual singer emerges,
conspicuous in the potency of his art. We have no longer,
as in Ilomcr, a sonorous mouthpiece for the deeds of
Achilles or the fated wanderings of Ulysses, but, as in
Sappho, the passionate throbbings of a human heart
seeking artistic expression. With the lyric subjective
poetry begins.
But the lyric is not the only kind of poetry that (Iraj^i
with hii RKin emotio n; for close beside it stands the drama
with its picture of complex human life and passion in
2 TIIE ENGLISH LYRIC
action and interaction. The lyric deals with passion and /
emotion in their simplicity and as such. For if a poem
detail more story than is sufficient to make plain the
situation out of which the emotion of the poem arises,
it is to that extent an epic or narrative poem. And if a
poem involve a conflict, the outcome of a succession of
events or the result of a conflict in character or person-
ality, the poem is to that degree dramatic. In words
derived from the technical sciences, dramatic poetry is
dynamic; lyric poetry is static. Hence the simplicity, the
brevity, and the intensity of the finest lyrical poetry; and
hence the argument, sometimes urged, that in the lyric
alone have we the actual spirit and essence of poetry, and
that the epic and the drama become poetry only in pro-
portion as they contain the elements that add the soul of
passion and the wings of song.
It is a moot question still with the dogmatists as to
whethe r or not rhy thm jg the " esseniial fact of poetry "; ^
though few will go so far as to declare that "unmetrical"
and "unpoetical" are interchangeable terms among the
criteria of the poetical art. Lyrical jjoetry^jmoretjiailiiny
other, however, demands thej,id.x)f those devices of lan-
guage which ally hunaaiL.5Eeech to music. Rhythm or- |
dered witFartisticvariety on the basis of an organic regu-
larity; the recurrence of stress, pause, line, and stanza so
that the pattern is repeated though with individual dis-
(
' For a discussion of this topic, with the conclusions of which the pre-
sent writer does not agree, see F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry,
New York, 1901, chapter ii.
DEFINITIONS 3
tinction ; melody in the sound and succession of words and I
harmony in their fitness for the thought and its changes — |
such are some of the graces of form demanded of the lyrist.
That the language of strong emotion often takes to itself,
both in literature and in life, a rhythmic regularity, is an
observation common to every school rhetoric, and, unlike
some such observations, literally true. And it is not less
true that emotion serves to clarify thought and add at
times the flash of wit and the color of figurative expression.
In the lyric better than in other varieties of poetry can
we appreciate Wordsworth's famous definition of poetry
as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," even
if the artistrj' and elaboration of many an individual
poem of the type compel us likewise to recall Words-
worth's added words "recollected [we may interpolate,
'and lovingly wrought out'] in tranquillity."
The lyric, as we have seen, then, is personal and sub-
jective, concerned with the poet himself, his thoughts,
emotions, and sentiments. But this does not demand
that lyrical poetry be of necessity autobiographical or
fail of its end, the production of an artistic impression
of subjective reality; for a i)Oct may succeed at times
in projcfting his personality — so to speak — into the
person of another and si)cak and feel unerringly as that
person speaks and feels. This power — and it is possessed
only by the greatest — is usually called dramatic instinct;
but in so far as it is poetic it is really lyrical, that is,
wholly subjcff ive. When Coleridge, for example, exclaims
enthusiastically of Shakespeare, "What maiden has he
4 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
not taught delicacy, what counsellor has he not taught
statecraft?" we find the critic recognizing that Shake-
speare has so transfused himself into the personalities of
his imagined personages that he realizes their emotions
to a degree beyond that which we may reasonably expect
of real beings under like circumstances; that is, he has, by
an exercise of a subtle artistic sympathy, so typified the
emotions of each that he has realized to us an art beyond
nature. Tliis is a subjective process, one inherent in the
large heart acted on by the strong brain of the master-
poet. It is a matter of broad sympathies and unerring
judgment; but it is also a matter of artistic insight, and
has little to do with that "dramatic instinct" which,
admirable in its own nature, is concerned more or less
with the objective arrangement of material, the framing
of situation, and the heightening of effect.
It is a demand of the lyric, which it shares with all good
)oetrjs that it unite universality of feeling with unity of
form. Turning, as the lyric must ever turn, "on some
'single thought, feeling, or situation," it is easily unbal-
anced and its artistry destroyed. Most repugnant to this
fragility is any attempt to hang on the delicate structure
of a lyrical poem the pendant of a moral; for the mood
induced by the poem thus becomes merely a means to an
ulterior end and is destroyed in the very moment of its
birth. Unity of subject requires a certain degree of brevity
and the elimination of most of the elements which other
varieties of verse possess in common with prose, elements
justified in lyrical poetry only to the degree in which they
DEFINITIONS 5
make for intelligibility. Thus, we must trespass neither
in the direction of action, mixed motives, nor in that of an
overplus of description or narrative, or the poem ceases
to be lyrical. Unity of form follows unity of subject and ',
adds to the effect of concentration. It is inconceivable j
that the lyric, which flourishes throughout English liter-
ature in so endless a variety, should be bound down to
conventional form; and yet, the design or pattern once
chosen in a given case, it must be preserved with the
inevitability of the recurrent blossom of a chosen flower.
Universality is obviously that quality which makes a
work of art "not of an age but for ;ill time"; and this
quality is achieved only when the poet recognizes and
makes his own those essential elements which give per-
manency to his theme and discards the accidental and
the evanescent. The most perishable form of verse, for
example, is satire; for although it rises at times to general
applications because of the perennial moulds into which
human vice and human folly are apt to run, satire is,
none the less, apt to take the guise of concrete and passing
allusion. Hall, Pope, and Butler must be read with notes
not only for this reason, but because satire naturally runs
to the type gathered into classes, and to caricature which
emphasizes the non-essential lines of the picture and the
perishable traits of humanity. The drama labors under a
similar difficulty from tlic necessity which ties the scene, ,
t(» a grcat(T or less degree, to the accidents of time and
place. The lyric, on the other hand, from its simj)li(ity
and celebration of universal feeling, has a belter chance
e THE ENGLISH LYRIC
of permanency. While men are lovers and women fair,
we shall take pleasure in the thousands of changes sung
upon the immortal theme of love; and while the condi-
tions of human life are what they are and ever have been,
we shall love to have the poets tell us:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
Old Time is still a-flying;
or listen to the noble, timeworn theme:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down.
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
The range of the lyric is the gamut of human emotion,
and nothing could be more inept than the current notion
of a lyric as merely a poem of love. The lyrist may sing
the raptures of a pure soul in communion with God, or
the apples of Sodom that turn to dust and bitterness
between the teeth of the lost sinner: and there is much
between hell and heaven. Indeed, here as elsewhere,
there can be no limits set to art. Wit, humor, folly,
fancy, cynicism, misanthropy (if it be " literatesque " like
Diogenes' tub), — all may serve the lyrist. The gods
laughed on Olympus and went to feast and revel with the
Ethiopians. Literature has no need for the limitations of
a false dignity, for life does not know them. And yet
there are dangers to the lyric in some emotions. Thus,
DEFINITIONS 7
misanthropy is apt to become rhetorical and egoistic,
both of which qualities destroy art because they hmit its
universahty. So, also, cynicism often becomes danger-
ously intellectualized, didactic, or ethically unsound; and
all of these things are repugnant to poet^3^ These topics
will find fitter discussion at the points in the history of
the lyric wherein we shall meet them. In conclusion of
these matters be it remarked that in anthologies of Eng-
lish poetry the epigram has sometimes trespassed on the
domain of the lyric. The epigram is often musical and
commonly short, and here the resemblance between it
and the lyric ends. For the epigram is intellectual,
rhetorical, and conscious, addressed to stir in the hearer
an approval of art; the lyric is emotional, poetic, a^d un-
conscious, in so far as a piece of artistry oilmen involving
a loving elaboration may exist for its owti end and only
secondarily for the pleasure which it is its legitimate func-
tion to occasion in the hearer or reader. However, it
would be unfair to the lyric to exclude from its domain
that admirable variety of verse which has of late been
denominated vers de socieie. Here, although, as one of its
most successful exponents has put it, "a boudoir decorum
is, or ought always to be, preserved; where sentiment
never surges into passion, and where humor never over-
flows into boisterous merriment," * there is yet abundant
oi)portunity for the display of some of the daintiest graces
of the poetic art. The line of demarcation is difficult to
draw: clearly the malevolence of satire is not lyrical, nor
* F. Locker-Lampson, in preface to Lyra Elcgantiarum, p. ix.
8 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the broad humor of parody and farce, any more than the
ballad, where narrative outweighs the emotions involved,
or the drama, where action transforms the unity of a
single mood into the changing pageant of passion in clash
with passion. That our conception of the lyric, like that
of everything else, has broadened with the process of the
suns, it will be one of the provinces of this book to make
plain in its place. For the present let this suflSce for the
delimitation of our subject.
CHAPTER II
THE MEDIEVAL LYRIC
ERE the subject of this book the lyrical ele-
ment in English literature, much might be
written of poetry in song in Anglo-Saxon
times when all were called on in turn to sing,
from Ilrothgar on his throne and the hero Beowulf beside
him to Csedmon, humble attendant on his Abbess Hilda
and for the nonce a keeper of beasts. But such song was
purely epic, and subjective only in the sense in which the
ballad may be said to be subjective as representing the
unified sentiment of the nation or tribe. It is not denied,
however, that there was poetry in Anglo-Saxon times
more personal in its note. Two poems of an early date
recount the experiences of the professional singer or poet
known as the gleeman or scop. In "Widsith," that far-
farer discourses with pride in his profession of his wander-
ings and of the peoples and kings that he has known. In
the "Deor" a gleeman laments his loss of the favor of his
lord, and consoles himself with like example of the vicissi-
tude of fortune and with the recurrent refrain — the only
example of a true refrain in Anglo-Saxon poetry — "That
sorrow went over, so may this." On this Brandl justly
observes that a refrain as an expression of an emotion is
ever and under all conditions lyrical.' "Widsilh," if it
' Gc3chichtc der allcnglischcn Literalur, Berlin, 1908, |). '15.
10 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
ever possessed an original personal significance, has be-
come by additions little more than a list of names; the
"Deor" retains more of the lyrical quality. More unmis-
takably lyric than either of these is the beautiful poem
entitled "The Seafarer," in which one who so journeys
tells of the hardships and lonesomeness of the sea, only
to alternate this mood with the awful joy of heart that
comes to him who answers its imperative and insistent
call. "The Seafarer " is more grim and urgent in its earlier
form, before the Christian consolations of the later addi-
tions blunted its primitive sentiment with a religious
application. Another Anglo-Saxon poem may be men-
tioned, "The Ruin," in which, with a fullness of elegiac
emotion hardly to be expected of so early an age, the poet
moralizes over the fallen glory of Roman luxury and
grandeur, though he knows this not and hyperbolically
attributes these mighty walls, now broken into barrows,
to the handiwork of giants. If we turn from the pre-
historic and traditional period of our first poetry to the
earliest period of English literary culture, we find still
a poetic literature almost entirely epic. Cynewulf, "Eng-
land's first great poet," practised an art wliich is essen-
tially epic, although the personal note is struck, not only
in the several passages in which the poet has inserted
the runes forming his name, but in many another place,
especially in the " Christ," and in the impassioned "Vision
of the Rood," which all true lovers of poetrj' would fain
continue to believe the work of Cynewulf, would the
critics allow them. With a mention of the indubitably
THE MEDLEVAL LYKIC 11
elegiac quality of "The Wanderer," like the "Deor" the
lament of a gleeman for lost and better days, and by some
held to contain the most lyrical passage in all Anglo-
Saxon, this enumeration of the lyrical element in our
earliest English poetry must come to a close. ^ The riddles,
from their ingenuity of form and thought and from their
appeal to a like quality of mind in the reader, belong to
the category of the epigram, not of the lyric. We may
accept as lyrical the joy of battle and the occasionally
vivid bits of suggestive description to be found in the
epic poems both national and religious. Otherwise the
poetic emotion of Anglo-Saxon poetry is elegiac, and the
lyric, so to speak, is as yet held in solution,
I Another question now confronts us, the relation of the
^lyric to that considerable, if dubiously defined, body of
/verse which, handed down from generation to generation
without the intervention of scop, gleeman, or minstrel,
is ultimately referable to the tribal community seeking
communal expression in song. Actual folk-song is for the
most part a matter of inference; for when song is written
down, the conscious artist has alrcatly intervened. And
yet it is not to be denied that much popular poetry, lyrical
and other, still preserved in England and elsewhere,
' These lines (J)2-90) of "Tlie Wanderer " have been called the most
lyrical in all our An^lcj-Saxon verse:
IIwtKr cwora mear^'? hw.'cr cwom mago? hwcer cwom maj'}>iimgyfa?
IIwDcr cwOm symhla kcscLu? liwu-r sindon sclcdrCamas?
Eala brorlit l)urul eala byrnwifja!
Eala )'?(MlncH )>rym! hii seo jTag pcwttt,
Genip under nihthelm, swa boo no wtcrel
12 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
strikes back its roots deep in what must have been the
primitive song of the folk. As to the nature of this basis
for the superstructure of the poetry of art the reader must
be referred elsewhere.^ We are told, for example, that
the earliest written poetry of the trouveres "discovers" the
lyric of art in the very act of its emergence out of the
rustic amatory songs of the folk, sung with accompany-
ing dance at their festivals by the throng, and accurately
identified by the scandalized clergy with survivals of
pagan worship. ^ No such transition as this can be traced
in the literature of England. For, as we have seen, the
lyrical element of Anglo-Saxon poetry is at best no more
I than elegiac; and the true lyric when it came to England,
1 like so much else, was introduced in the form, in the spirit,
land even, at first, in the language of France.
As to the lyric of the Middle Ages in general, it is most
deeply traced, as is well known, in Provencal dancing-
songs that were features immemorially of the festivals of
the folk, wherein were sung the praises of spring, the union
of youth and joy and the like, reduced almost to an obliga-
tory formula. Fostered by the social amenities and ele-
gances of castle and court that now came more and more
to temper the rudeness of earlier times, these songs de-
veloped, in the eleventh century and in the hands of
the troubadours, into a highly conventional and artificial
^ See especially F. B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad, Boston, 1907, in
the present Series.
2 E. K. Chambers, "Some Aspects of the Mediaeval Lyric," Early
English Lyrics, London, 1907, p. 261.
THE MEDIEVAL LYKIC IS
literature of the art of love. This was almost altogether
lyric; and in it great importance was attached to certain
refinements of speech and conduct entitled '* courtoisie,"
which enjoined a species of fashionable gallantry, in its
ideals, whatever its practices, alike remote from sensu-
ality and from actual courtship with the wedlock of the
lovers in view. This troubadour poetrj'- was wholly aristo-
cratic, and long is the list of knights, nobles, and even
kings that grace its annals. But the professional trouba-
dours are at least as numerous; and as the popularity of
this poetry spread from its cradle in Poitou and Limousin,
first to Catalonia and Italy, and later from the south over
France proper and England, the rigidity of its rules and
usages was relaxed as its examples were imitated in new
tongues and under novel conditions. The double mar-
riage of Eleanor of Guicnne was an important means of
this diffusion of the ''courtois" lyric northward. As the
daughter of William of Poitou, "the father of the trouba-
dours," this cultivated lady presided over the court at
Bordeaux, extending a bountiful and encouraging hand
to the poets of her own race. Later, as queen of France
for fifteen years, and lastly, from 1154 to 1206, as queen
of the Englisli Ilcnry II (then sovereign as well of half of
France), Queen Eleanor spread her taste for social and
poetical pleasures and stretched forth her patronage as
far as the bounds of the language of France. Provencal
troubadours came thus to live for protracted i)eriods of
time in England; and Frenchmen and men of English
birth attendant on the court of King Henry learned at
14 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
first hand the courtois poetry of Provence,^ a matter of
no small import to the growth of the lyric of art.
Another influence that went to the preparation of the
English lyric w^as that of the religious poetry of the day.
The solidarity of the mediaeval church and of mediaeval
education, cemented as it was with Latin, the universal
tongue of learning, needs only to be stated to be recog-
nized. There was no scholarship outside of the church.
The clergy shaded down from the decorous officers of
place to Chaucer's "poor parson" and the monastic or-
ders, through all degrees of friars, mendicant and unat-
tached, to the wandering scholars, as notorious for the
wildness of their lives as for their wit and talents, on occa-
sion, as mere minstrels. The Latin formulae of service
and Latin hymns were ever on the clerics' lips, and, as the
higher clergy in England for a couple of centuries were
almost wholly French-speaking, French culture permeated
the cloister and the abbey as well as the court. It is not
surprising, then, to find the influence of Latin hymns on
early English religious poetry strongly tinctured with ele-
ments derived from the secular love songs of troubadour
and trouvere. It was this that led to the extensive Marian
verse in which were extolled the five joys of the Virgin
and the like. Few of these early religious poems are in
any degree lyrical, although an exception may be urged
in the case of the beautiful poem entitled "A Love Rune,"
written by Thomas de Hales, an eloquent discant on the
1 On this whole subject, see especially Gaston Paris, La Littcrature
Franqaine au Moyen Age, Paris, 1890, pp. 175 ff. and 18 ff.
THE MEDLEVAL LYRIC 15
vanity of earthlj' love and the sanctity of \nrginity. More
certainly lyrical is the macaronic "Song to the Virgin,"
the elaborate and easy flow of the stanza of which is note-
worthy.
Of on that is so fayr and bright
Vclud maris stella.
Brighter than the day is light.
Parens et puella ;
Ic crie to the, thou se to me,
Levedy, preye thi sone for me.
Tarn pia.
That ic mote come to the,
Maria I
Lyrically effective, too, are the strong elegiac verses
beginning
Were beth they biforen us weren,
Houndes ladden and hauckes beren ?
reverberating a string that has sounded down the ages
from Anglo-Saxon times through Villon's "Mats oil sont
les neigcs (Tantan" and Nash's "Queens have died young
and fair," and will resound to the latest lyrists of all time.
The several manuscripts in which these poems occur
date variously before l^oO and towards the end of the
thirteenth century; but the composition of these poems,
as always in these cases, may be dated backward many
years with probability.' By the middle of the thirteenth
century, poetry in English had come fully into revival, a
fact well established by the lively and interesting debate.
The Owl and the Nightingale, which corresponds in ])oint
' Sec appendix, "Sources of Texts," Early English Lyrics, as above.
16 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
of date almost precisely with the poem of Hales. The Owl
and the Nightingale is not lyrical, but its genuine poetic
merit, the ease and certainty of its verse with the purity
of its English vocabulary, conspire to explain why the
earliest extant mediieval lyrics in English, both sacred
and secular, display none of the stuttering simplicity of
nonage and experiment.
Turning now to the earliest extant lyrics that are
purely secular in kind, we meet with three little snatches
of song, all of them set to music. Two retain a shadow
of the Anglo-Saxon melancholy; the third is the famous
"Cuckoo Song."
Summer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu,
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu !
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc stirteth, bucke verteth;
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wei singes thu, cuccu,
Ne swik thu naver nu.
Despite the spirit and natural charm of this little lyric,
we must be careful not to refer it to either the folk or
to too unaffected a native-born love of nature. "The
Cuckoo Song" appears in a manuscript the earlier por-
tion of which is supposed to have been written in the
Abbey of Reading about the year 1240. It is accompanied
THE IVIEDLEVAL LYRIC 17
by the musical notation of a rota or rondel (a species of
song not unlike the later canon), with explicit Latin direc-
tions as to how to sing it; and the words are a conscious
poetical adaptation of the reverdie, or song of greeting to
spring, well known in France. The music of this Uttle
song has received praise as cordial and deserved as that
bestowed upon its fresh and natural words.
With the opening of the fourteenth century the manu-
script remains of mediaeval song in England become fuller.
The famous Harleian Manuscript 2253 alone contains
more than a hundred pieces in verse and prose, Latin,
Anglo-French, and English, more than two score of them
lyrics in English; and there are some six or seven other
manuscripts the contents of which must date in writing
well before 1400, though none contain so large a body as
this. Such is the variety of these poems, the uncertainty
of their precise time of writing, and the diversity of the
dialects in which they are written, that enumeration
rather than classification must suffice to set them before
the reader. And yet certain broad lines by way of classi-
fication are not impossible of distinction. There are the
songs of the minstrel, the poetry of the cloister, and the
lyrics of the polite poets, altliotigh it is not always quite
certain which is which; and, cleaving through this three-
fold distinction by reference to origin, there is division
by way of theme into religious and secular i)octry. Tlie
I)olite poet was late to emerge, and we may defer iiim and
liis work for the moment.
The minstrelsy of the Middle Ages seems hardly more
18 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
separable from the polite poetry of troubadour and
trouvere than the songs of the wandering scholars are
separable from the poetry of clerics on the one hand and
that of the folk on the other. It may be suspected that
when the polite art of poetry fell into professional hands,
the English minstrel, whose line of inheritance is direct
from the gleeman, rose somewhat in dignity, though he
must have descended in more senses than one from his
other ancestor, the knightly troubadour and trouvere. The
mediaeval minstrel, whatever his occasional success and
repute, was often little more than a privileged vagabond,
licensed to wander where he would, picking up a liveli-
hood by his talents as a singer, actor, and general enter-
tainer. Although disdained as an inferior, alike by the
cleric and the man at arms, the minstrel was ever welcome
in times of festival whether at court, in the castles of the
nobility, at gatherings in the market town, or even at
the hospitable tables of the religious houses. Indeed, we
read of fortunes squandered by nobles on minstrels and
of gifts to them of money and even of lands. ^ We do not
know to what extent the minstrel was responsible for the
remnants of the mediaeval lyric that have come down to us.
That he was responsible for much seems hardly question-
able, for it was to his interest as an entertainer to keep a
record of his craft. Without further reference to this
matter of origins let us look at some of the varieties of
these lyrics.
' On this whole topic see the admirable chapters of Chambers,
The Mediaeval Stage, London, 1903, i, pp. 11-86.
THE MEDLEVAL LYRIC 19
The distinguishing elements of the folk-song have been
briefly stated: "as to substance, repetition, interjection,
and refrain; and, as to form, a verse accommodated to a
dance, question and answer, and rustic interchange of
satire." ^ The same authority adds that although these
features are not to be found combined in any one speci-
men of the mediaeval lyric, all are exemplified in the col-
lections extant. The refrain is often meaningless, as
Po, po, po, po.
Love bran and so do mo;
or distorted, as "Kyrieleyson" applied to verses far from
religious or even respectable. It is often in French or
Latin, as Veni coronaberis, in the case of a catch in praise
of the ivy, referable back to heathen worship of that plant
in strife with the holly as emblems of the fructifying
principles. Most usually the refrain bears, however, a close
relation to the subject in hand, as where each stanza of a
carol ends with "Wolcum, Yole!" each stanza of a bac-
chanal with "But bring us in good ale!" or of a satirical
song in mockery of the sad estate of the lover:
Such tormentes to me I take.
That when I slepe I may not wake.
But these have, of course, nothing actually in common
with the folk. In the following, however conscious this
particular version, the improvisation of the initial f)hrase
by the individual singer, the chorus and the very sway of
the throng to and fro, arc all well preserved:
' F. M. Paclclff)rd, in The Cambridge History oj EnglLih Literature,
Cambridjjp. 190H. ii, 422.
20 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
I have twelfe oxen that be faire and brown,
And they go a grasing down by the town.
With hey! with how! with hey!
Saweste not you mine oxen, you litill prety boy?
I have twelfe oxen and they be faire and white.
And they go a grasing down by the dyke.
With hey! with how! with hey!
Saweste not you mine oxen, you litill prety boy?
Another form of verse, more or less ultimately referable
to folk-song, is the verse amoebsean or question and reply.
A romantic fragment of this begins :
Maiden in the mor lay, in the mor lay sevenight full.
Well was hire mete, wat was hir mete ?
The primerole ant the violet.
The dialogue form was developed in later amorous verse
to a degree of elaboration in poems such as "The Nut-
brown Maid" or in Henryson's "Robene and Makyne,"
but this last at least has a very different origin.
In the carol, which was brought over from France at
least as early as the twelfth century, the minstrel tres-
passed on the province of the religious poet, while touch-
ing at the same time the popular festivities handed down
with the modifications of compromise from pre-Christian
times. It is no wonder, then, that the carols range from
narratives of the Nativity and other related events of the
life of Christ to naive expressions of the joy, the feast-
ing, and the good fellowship of Yule-tide and the customs
that accompanied this most important festivity of the
year. Several delightful songs declare the traditional
strife between the holly and the ivy:
THE MEDIAEVAL LYRIC 21
Holly bereth beris,
Beris rede enough;
The thristilcok, the popingay
Daunce in every bough.
Wei away, sory Ivy!
What fowles hast thou.
But the sory howlet
That singeth "how how."
Others relate to the ancient rite of bringing in the boar's
head in procession and with song:
The boris hede in hondes I bringe,
With garlondes gay and birdes singinge,
I pray you all, helpe me to singe
Qui estis in convivio;
while still others offer little more than jovial words of
welcome :
Lett no man cum into this hall,
Grome, page, nor yet marshall.
But that sum sport he bring us all :
For now is the time of Christemas!
Closely related to the more serious carols of the Christ-
mas season arc the spiritual lullal)ics in which the Child
is represented in his mother's arms or lulled to sleep in
his cradle by her song. At times a dialogue ensues between
the two, the Child forclclJing the sufferings that are to be
his or uttering prophetic promises of the glory that is to
come. A variety of this tyj)e is the conif)]uint of Mary,
which takes many forms, such as that of an address to
Jesus, or to the cross, a dialogue between Marj'^ and Jesus
or Mary and the cross, or even a trialogue in which John
22 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
also figures.^ These last are closely akin to the famous
mediaeval Latin hymn, '' Stabat Mater dolorosa." As to
the lullabies at large, many of them are distinguished by
a genuine depth and tenderness of feeling and by invent-
ive fertility in similitude and poetic adornment. Their
variety of metre, too, derived with equal facility from the
Teutonic four stress alliterative verse, from the sepienarius
of the Latin hymns or the more varied stanzas of French
secular song, is here, as elsewhere in the mediaeval lyric,
endless. Characteristically mediaeval is the type which
converts the thought into allegory:
Lully, lulley, lully, lulley;
The fawcon hath born my make away.
He bare hyra up, he bare hym down.
He bare hym in to an orchard browne.
In that orchard there was an halle
That was hangid with purpill and pall.
And in that hall there was a bede.
Hit was hangid with gold so rede.
And yn that bede there lythe a knyght.
His woundis bledying day and nyght.
By that bede side kneleth a may.
And she wepeth both nyght and day.
And by that bedde side there stondith a ston.
Corpus Christi wretyn ther on.
The recurrence of the refrain after each couplet, the repe-
titionary quality of the cumulative statements, the Teu-
* Cambridge History oj English Literature, ii, p. 434.
THE MEDLEVAL LYRIC 23
tonic simplicity of the verse, the allegory and its directness,
unite in this little poem to produce an effect not easily
equaled by our late poets who have attempted the revival
of things mediaeval. Longer and less well sustained is the
allegory of another poem wherein the poet fancies himself
a careless youth treading his way "of a somers day," his
hawk on fist, his spaniel by his side, the game in sight,
when a rough brier pricks him as he passes and bids him
'* revertere" Such poems connect the groups of religious
poems with those that dilate on the vanity of life, and
hark back ultimately to the Psalms and Ecclesiastes and
to the many patristic writings that dwell on the favorite
mediaeval theme, de contempiu mundi. And here, too,
belongs that grim conception of life as a dance of death,
popular subject for brush and chisel as for drama and the
lyric.
Erthe appon erthe wolde be a kinge;
Bot howe erthe to erthe sail, thinkes he no thinge.
When erthe bredes erthe, and his rentes home bringe.
Thane schalle erthe of erthe hafe full harde partinge.^
These are tones such as those of the deepest pipes of the
organ when sound ceases to be wholly audible and stirs us
only as a mysterious and disquieting tremor. Less mov-
ing are the poems the intent of which is only monitory:
trust not friendship untried, be careful not to talk o'er
much, keep money in thy purse, beware of losing the
freedom of bachelorhood; and these in turn shade off
into satirical verses directed against women, their wiles,
' Early English Lyrics, p. 171.
24 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
their shrewishness, their idle gossip, and ale-bibbing.
With them and with the reiterated truisms of moral and
gnomic verses we speedily pass out of the realm of song
into the close confines of didacticism, where "no birds
sing."
The love songs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
defy in their variety any attempt at classification. The
influences that went to their making were much those
governing other lyrical poetry, save that here direct
influences from France are more certainly traceable.
Among the several French types translated and imitated
most frequently are the address, the debat, the pastoureUe,
and the ballade, the last ordinarily losing its form. The
address often takes the shape of a New Year's letter from
the poet to his lady, couched in stately terms declaring
undying allegiance and service. The debat is restricted in
English to a dialogue between a heartless lady and her
devoted "servant." It is sometimes prolonged to great
length and maintained with more ingenuity than lyricism,
as in the well-known example of La Belle Dame Sans
Mercy. The pastoureUe, a common form of the chanson
d'aventure, is either a love song, in dialogue between two
rustics, or the love-making of a gallant and a country
maiden. Of this last two interesting English specimens
are extant. One of them has cast off wholly the foreign
spirit and, though only a late version exists (one sung by
Henry VIII and his courtiers), from its recurrent refrain
and other features the poem is doubtless of far earlier
origin. The first stanza runs:
THE MEDLEVAL LYRIC 25
Hey, troly loly lo, maid, whither go you ?
I go to the meadow to milk my cow.
Then at the meadow I will you meet.
To gather the flowers both faire and sweet.
Nay, God forbid, that may not be!
I wis my mother then shall us see.^
It was the snatch of an old pastourelle, otherwise known,
that Feste sang in Twelfth Night :
A Robyn, jolly Robyn,
Tell me how they leman doeth
And thou shalt knowe of myn;
and it was the pastourelle that Henryson glorified into that
most charming of his shorter poems " Robene and Makyne"
which enforces the naive but wholesome lesson that
The man that will nocht quhen he may
Sail haif nocht qtihen he wald.
"Of all forms of amatory poetry," says Padelford, "the
ballade enjoyed the greatest popularity in England. . . .
Every phase of the conventional love-complaint, every
chapter in the cycle of the lover's history is treated in
these ballades precisely as in the corresponding verse in
France." ^ Without further specifying these influences in
forms such as the aube or complaint of a lover at the
approach of morning, the chanson a personnages or song
of the rites of spring, or the effect of lightsome measures
such as those of the lai and the descort, we may turn to the
' Ilci)rint<(l in Aiiglia, Xii, p. 2.55, in an older form.
* Camhrid'jr Englixli Lilcrahirr, p. Hi. This passage must be inter-
preled as api)lying to the conlonl, n(jt the difTicull technical form, of the
balladr, which, a.s a matter of fact, was little practised in mediieval Eng-
land save by Chaucer and his followers.
26 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
larger characteristics of this rich literature of late medi-
eval amorous song. Here we find the joy of life and a
feeling for the beauty of the world, flowers, birds, and
sunshine, all, in a sense, the conventional furniture of the
poet and yet not wholly lacking in that quality of par-
ticularity which critics are accustomed to associate only
with later times. In a famous song the poet bursts forth :
Bytuene Mersh ant Averil,
When spray biginneth to springe.
The hitel foul hath hire wyl
On hyre lud to synge.
Ich libbe in love-longinge
For semlokest of alle thinge ;
He may me blisse bringe;
Icham in hire bandoun.
And hendy hap ichabbe yhent;
Ichot from hevene it is me sent;
From alle wymmen mi love is lent
Ant lyht on Alysoun.^
Attention has been called to little personal touches among
these lyrics. Of Alysoun we learn that "hire browe" was
"broune, hire eye blake." "One wommon woneth by
west"; a second is described as "that swete thing, with
eyen gray," and of still another, a maid of Ribbesdale,
we are told, in what amounts to "the precision of a min-
iature," that "hire chyn is cloven" and she
Hath a mury mouht to mele.
With lefly rede lippes lele,
Romaunz for to rede.
* Printed in Bsddeker, p. 147. Lutel foul, little bird; lud, voice;
libbe, live; sembkesl, seemliest; he, she; Icham, I am; bandoun, lordship;
hendy, fair, lucky; yhent, gained; Ichot, I wot ; lent, turned.
THE MEDLEVAL LYRIC 27
Unquestionably the English minstrel worked himself
freer of "the metaphysics of love" than his Gallic elder
brother; he avows frankly the nature of his passion, de-
claring how, as
In a wj'ndon, ther we stod.
We cxiste use fyfty sythe, ^
and the lady in turn as frankly confesses.
That I nam thyn, and thou art myn,
To don al thi wille.
To the Latin of the cloister touching the French of the
court, with all the cross-currents of their intermingling
with the vernacular, must be ascribed the macaronic na-
ture of so many of these poems both sacred and secular.
To these influences, too, must be referred both the per-
version of hymns and the parodying of sacred songs by
the wandering scholars as well as the retaliatory adapta-
tion of amorous ministrelsy to sacred uses. The Francis-
cans especially were active in this last, enjoined as they
had been by their founder, St. Francis, a trouvere in his
youth, to become joculatores Domini. It has been noted
that "the only two names to which religious lyrics attach
themselves in the thirteenth century are both those of
Other minorites." There are not lacking other later
examples.
The martial si)lrit, however it permeated the age and
although it produced much verse which belongs to the
occasional class, has given us only one name with which
indulgent criticism can link the title, lyrist. Of Law-
' How ft, :i window, a.s we 8too<l, we kissed each other fifty times.
28 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
rence Minot we know literally nothing save his name,
which he attached in two places to a manuscript con-
taining eleven poems in lyrical form dealing with the
deeds of Edward III against the French and the Scots
between 1333 and 1352. Minot is a skilful versifier, after
the intricate mediaeval scholarly manner, and his lines are
direct, vigorous, and imbued with the species of patriot-
ism that lauds the victor and gibes the foe. I cannot
feel that " the poetical value of these songs has been
somewhat unduly depreciated." ^
The polite poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies were surprisingly unly rical ; even Chaucer, of whom
the modern spirit is so consistently aflfirmed, with all his
marvellous range of epic and dramatic art, is reflective
and elegiac, ever musical, yet rarely quite lyrical. The
Book of the Duchess, The Prioress* Tale, and the lawyer's
Tale of Constance, all, however, in parts disclose Chaucer
lyrically, when he dips for the nonce below the rippling
surface of his incomparable narrative art. "Truth,"
"Gentilesse," and "The Former Age" are pieces admir-
ably reflective, and Chaucer's vers de societe — "To Rosa-
mund," for example — rings charming variations on its
conventional and artificial themes. But when all has
been said, there are few authentic lyrics in Chaucer. Per-
haps best among them, though also on a theme well-worn,
is the burst into song of the birds at the close of The
Parlement of Foules :
1 See Ilall, J., The Poems of Lavrence Minot, Oxford, 1889, and
C. L. Thomson in Cambridge English Literature, i, p. 398.
THE MEDIEVAL LYRIC 29
Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe.
That hast this wintres weders over-shake.
And driven awey the longe nightes blake!
Seynt ValentjTi, that art ful hy on-lofte; —
Thus singen smale foules for thy sake — •
Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe.
That hast this wintres weders over-shake.
Wei han they cause for to gladen ofte,
Sith ech of hem recovered hath his make;
Ful blisful may they singen whan they wake:
Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe.
That hast this wintres weders over-shake.
And driven awey the longe nightes blake.
This little poem is in form a rondel, a development among
the French poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies of the popular dance-song (rondet or rondet de carole)
and consisting of two elements, the text which varies and
is sung by the leader, and the refrain, repeated in unvary-
ing words, by the other singers. The rondel developed
into several varieties from the eight-line form, commonly
called a triolet, to those of thirteen or fourteen lines. The
ordering of the refrain complete, one line of the text, one
line of the refrain, two or more of the text, closing with
the complete refrain as here, is the usual arrangement.
Chaucer was fond of these difHcult exotic French forms, the
ballade in particular, which ordering three rimes in eight
lines interwoven {ah a h h he), repeats the stanza thrice
on the three rimes and concludes with an envoy, or appli-
cation, still playing on the earlier three rimes. Chaucer
wrote under influences emanating from France practi-
30 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
cally throughout his career; they were overwhelmingly
predominant in his earliest work, not only in metrical
forms and titles such as the Covi'pleynt (a love poem of
mournful intent usually addressed to a pitiless lady), but
in the plan and spirit of his work. And all these things
continued in the poets that followed Chaucer and vowed
fealty to him. But if Chaucer, with all his grace, melody,
and powers of observation, is not essentially lyrical, no
more lyrical is any one of his immediate disciples and
successors. The trilingual moral Gower, feebly sprawl-
ing Occleve, Lydgate, biographical if not subjective in
his satirical flash, "London Lyckpenny" (if the critics
will allow it to be his), the author of Wallace, King James
with his Kingis Quair, prolonging a plaint of love to 1400
lines — none of these is lyrical. It is not, indeed, until we
reach Henryson, Dunbar, and Skelton that the lyrical
note breaks forth among these learned poets; in them,
with all their morality, satire, and allegory, the lyric is
like a sparse and belated blossom of the gorse, otherwise
of foliage harsh, dark, and thorny. To Henryson, as v^
have seen, we owe the earliest English pastoral poem,/
"Robene and Makyne," an amoebaean lyric of delightful
naivete. With Skelton and Dunbar, who was the first
British poet to see his works in print, we reach a new
age, and with these names to carry over we may fittingly
conclude this chapter.
CHAPTER III
LYRICAL POETRY IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS
T the opening of the sixteenth century the
greatest author writing in an English tongue
was the Scottish poet, William Dunbar. Dun-
bar's education was complete about 1480; he
had meditated taking orders, but instead travelled abroad,
as the scholars of the day were wont to do, visiting France
and England. Some years before the opening of the new
centurv' Dunbar had become the king's poet, and his life
from then on is associated with the court of James IV of
Scotland, who appears to have supported him with a sub-
stantial pension towards the end of his life. There is a
tradition that Dunbar fell with his master at Flodden
Field; at least we hear no more of the poet after 1513.
Dunbar is the greatest of the Chauccrians. As such he
belongs to the older age, and modernity is not to be ex-
pected of him. Indeed the May-morning, the dream, the
allcgorv' of bird and beast, grotcsqueness of imagery, even
the moralizing {)lutitude — all the hackneyed conven-
tions of the old poetry — are Dunbar's. His observa-
tion of nature — which has sometimes been praised —
betrays him (though pcrhaj)s here he only followed his
models in Middle-English) into such generalizations as
this:
S2 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
A nychtingaill with suggurit notis new
Quhois angell fedderis as the peacock schone:
obviously a bird that sings sweetly must likewise be gor-
geously plumaged. And yet Dunbar is likewise a powerful
and delightful poet in his own right, and one who, but for
the difficulties of his voluble Scottish tongue, must long
since have come more fully into his own. Music there is,
and movement, in all Dunbar's poetry , and it has been
confidently affirmed that he was the first British poet
to create classical lyrics of an artistic kind.^
In Scotland Dunbar had but one rival, Gawain Douglas,
translator of the ^ncid, a learned humanist to whom
poetry was one of the diversions of rhetoric. Stephen
Hawes, too, in England similarly practised poetry as a
commendable moral occupation, setting up his poetical
trinity, Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, too pious to dis-
tinguish their attributes, or perhaps too dull to discern
them. An abler man and more abreast with his age was
Alexander Barclay, translator of Brandt's Ship of Fools
and author of the earliest eclogues in the English tongue;
and abler still was John Hey wood, the epigrammatist, and
writer of clever and witty interludes. But no one of these
worthy writers could have been betrayed into an indiscre-
tion such as a lyric. Such was not true of their greater
contemporary, John Skelton. Skelton was Henry VIII's
poet much as Dunbar had been the poet of James IV.
1 Brandl, in Ten Brink's Geschichte der englischen Litterature, Berlin,
1893, II, 431. Cf. also F. B. Gummere, Old English Ballads. 1894, In-
troduction, p. xiii.
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 33
The English poet's social standing was less than Dun-
bar's, but, crowned poeta laureaius for his Latin verses
at Oxford, his professional honors were greater as well as
the emoluments that they carried. Skelton was one of the
royal tutors, a lover of the new learning, a man of the
type of Erasmus and More; but he was also a satirist,
though his bitter flagellation of abuse, especially in the
person of his arch-enemy Cardinal Wolsey, places him
fathoms lengths above such a royal jester as Heywood.
The wider reaches of the Skeltonian literature do not con-
cern us here. Skelton was alike satirist, epigrammatist,
and dramatist, and as such after his kind he is grotesque,
allegorical, and didactic. But Skelton is likewise a poet,
disclosing at times a lyrical note and power of music, the
more remarkable that he produced his effects with the
old tumbling metres, and appears to have been little
affected either by reminiscences of earlier English min-
strelsy or by the new Petrarchism so soon to dominate
English amorous verse. The most musical of his lyrics
bubbles with an ecstatic refrain:
Merry Margaret
As miflsommer flower,
Gcnll(! as falcon
Or hawk of the tower.
More of the universal stuff of the lover's complaint are
the following lines, which, however, are distinguishable
in more than their antiquated language from the new
lyric shortly to spring up in the court of Skclton's
master:
34 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Go, pytyous hart, rasyd with dedly wo
Persyd with pain, bleding with wondes smart,
Bewayle thy fortune, with vaynys wan and bio.
O Fortune unfrendly. Fortune unkynde thou
To be so cruel and so ovarthwart
To suffer me so carefull to endure
That who I love best I dare not dyscure!
Before we proceed to the rise of the new court lyric in
Wyatt and Surrey, let us turn to the lyrical poetry —
I true descendant of the poetry of the minstrel — that con-
I tinued to be set to music and sung in the musical court of
King Henry VIII. A considerable corpus of material has
been preserved, made up of manuscript poems dating from
the youth of the king, some of them by the royal hand,
others by poets and musicians of his court; still other ex-
amples are furnished by parts of song books and collec-
tions of carols.^ Indubitably much of this belongs to a
far earlier time; but some of it is referable to the years
immediately following King Henry's accession to his
throne. As is well known though occasionally forgotten,
Henry in his youth was a very accomplished prince, who
added to prowess in athletic games of skill, a theological
acumen that attempted the confutation of Luther in
print. Among King Henry's minor graces was an ability
to compose verses and set them to music; and several
specimens of his skill in the wedded arts remain extant.
Evidently the sociable monarch spoke out of his heart
when he wrote:
' See especially for this the collection of E. Fliigcl, in Anglia, xii, pp.
230 ff.
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 35
Pastime with good company
I love and shall until I die;
but it must come as a surprise to some that the English
Bluebeard should ever have sung:
As the holly groweth green.
And never changeth hue.
So I am, ever hath been
Unto my lady true.
Some other names appear among these early court lyrists,
such as William Cornysshe and Thomas Fardyng, both
musicians of the Chapel Royal, an interesting testimony
to the close union of music and poetry in these early
times. That the composers were likewise the authors of
the verses which they set to music we cannot of course be
certain. That the poet and musician did often so com-
bine, as frequently later, can scarcely be denied. In these
collections there is no inconsiderable variety of subject-
matter and treatment. By no means are all of these
poems erotic; besides those celebrating good fellowship,
there are hunting songs, gnomic verses, a few devotional
poems, especially specimens of the lullaby, and even
lines breathing the patriotic spirit. There are no more
spirited verses in the collection than the following which
appear anonymously and may be referred to a time just
prior to the Baltic of the Spurs, 1513:
Englond l)e glad, j)hik up thy lusty hart.
Help now thi king, tlii king, and take his part.
Agcynst llic frcnclimcn in tho fcid to fyght,
in the quareli of the church and in the- ryght.
36 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
With spers and sheldys on gudly horsys lyght,
Bowys and arows to put them all to flyght.
Intrinsically this poetry marks little if any advance be-
yond the earlier mediaeval collections of like character.
All is simple and natural in manner, free from the slight-
est attempt at descriptive effect, save for the decorative
" flowers sweete," the over-worked nightingale, and the
inevitable May morning. And there is as little of the
classics as there is of the hyperbole of emotion. As to
the versification, there is all but an absolute adherence to
the older metrical system, that is: the system ultimately
referable to Early English times and dependent less on
distribution of light and accented syllables, than on regu-
lar recurrence of the accents (usually four, or reduce-
able to four) — or to that system as modified by the Latin
septenary and its derivatives, the English ballad metres.
Repeated rimes, internal rimes, repetitions of phrase and
refrain added to all this, conspire to produce a contrast
alike with the learned poets of the age and those that
came after, and to justify Marlowe's phrase in designa-
tion of this kind of verse as "the jigging vein of riming
mother wits." Indeed, with popular poetry such as this
and Chaucerians more mediaeval than was ever Chaucer
a hundred and twenty years before, there was little pro-
mise in the early days of Henry VIII of the blossoming
of lyrical poetry.
English lyrical poetry first felt the flush and the quick-
ening of the Renaissance when Henry had been on his
throne a score of years. As the excellent Elizabethan
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 37
critic, Puttenham, quaintly puts it: "In the latter end
of the same king's raigne sprong up a new company of
courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and
Henrj' Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who hav-
ing travailed into Italic, and there tasted the sweete and
stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie, as nov-
ices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto,
and Petrarch, they greatly poHshed our rude and homely
manner of vulgar poesie, from that it had been before, and
for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of
our English metre and stile." As a matter of fact, Surrey
never ;" travailed into Italic," though Wyatt certainly!
did. Wyatt was the elder and the abler, and to him is due
the new direction of English poetry; yet Surrey was an |
intelligent disciple. To Wyatt we owe the introduction \
of the Italian sonnet into English literature; to Surrey I
the modification of this exotic form to accord with Eng-
lish metrical traditions.
The lyric of love, as we have seen, found its earliest
modern literary expression in Provencal poetry. This
poetry in turn inspired, as is well known, the Italian lyr-
ists of the thirteenth ccnturv', who sang with a .sweetness,
a purity, and literary finish which few succeeding ages
have approached. The troubadour sought to idealize his^
pa.ssion, but it remained in his hands none the less a .sen- 1
suous and joyous thing of earth. His Italian disciples were
the first to achieve that .apotheosis of love, whereby hu-
man passion becomes the symbol of a spiritual adora-
tion of i)urity and holiness, and reverence su{)plants the
88 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
lover's longing to possess the idol of his affections.* An-
other characteristic of this poetry was its scholasticism
leading to subtlety of thought and illustration, to alle-
gory and to personification, though these latter are com-
mon to other forms of mediaeval literature. All these
things are sometimes denominated Platonism; and if we
recognize that this is not the Platonism of the Greeks,
however derivative in certain qualities, we have enough
for our present purpose. It was in the beautiful and sub-
limely spiritual poetry of the Vita Nuova of Dante that
this cult of idealized love found its ultimate expression.
When we turn to Petrarch we find that the ideals of the
Renaissance had superseded those of medisevalism; but
it is not as if these finer ideals had never existed. Petrarch,
like Dante, celebrated in his sonnets an ideal passion;
but while Dante, in the white heat of a passionate devo-
tion to his Beatrice, reaches the ecstasy of the saint, in-
tensity of passion in Petrarch dethrones at times his god-
dess Laura, however elsewhere exalted by the hyperbole
of her lover's exquisite poetry. Petrarch is finished in
diction, possessed of a ruling sense of design and skilful
in the adornment of his verse with mythological and
classical allusions. He is original in his employment of
metaphor, which he occasionally carries to a degree of
logical nicety that recalls mediaeval allegory. Elsewhere
his metaphors are fetched from afar and imaginatively
wrought, leading on, in his imitators Italian and English,
* See J. B. Fletcher, The Religion of Beauty in Women, New York,
1911.
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 39
to the extravagance and bad taste known as "the con-
ceit."
It was Petrarch that Wyatt followed, not Dante. Fif- \
teen of the thirty-two sonnets of Wyatt are actual trans- a
lations of sonnets of Petrarch and seven more are adapta-
tions. It cannot be said that Wyatt selected Petrarch at
his best or for the best that is in the Italian poet. Wyatt
seems mainly to have been attracted to his originals here
for the purpose of exercise and example. Metrically espe-
cially, Petrarch served him while he was working away
from the old accentual system of English versification \ ,
to a more careful ordering of syllables whereby in time a \^ n
smoothness, not hitherto affected by English lyrists, be-
came one of the characteristics of English verse. But
Italian was not the only influence on Wyatt. While but a
single sonnet of his has been traced to its actual French
original, many of Wyatt's love poems show a reflection in
form and sentiment of French popular poetry, and he
practised the rondeau with success.^ Historically the po-
sition of Wyatt is important, representing as he does the
lyric of the twenties and thirties; intrinsically few of his
imitations, repeating as they do the accepted common-
places of other men, can be ranked very high. To speak of
Wyatt even when at his best as one who surpasses Pe-
trarch in imagination and all the English sonneteers, "till
we come to Shakespeare," in passion, is to obscure the
' On Wyatt'a relations to foregoing poetry, French and Italian, see
esperially Paclclford's Introduction, Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics,
11)07, pp. xix-xlix.
40 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
significance of words. For a dozen, or perhaps a score of
his lyrics, to say nothing of his sincere and capable satire,
Wyatt takes an honorable place as the earliest outrider
of distinction in the brilliant procession of Elizabethan
poetry so soon to follow.
As to Surrey, he is as genuine a disciple of Petrarch as
of Wyatt. His verse belongs between 1528 and 1547,
in which latter year he was executed on a trumped-up
charge of treason just before King Henry's own death.
A smoother and more certain metrist, Surrey had learned
by Wyatt's experiments, though he reached not beyond
the range of his master in theme or manner of treatment.
Surrey's are the competences of expression and the refine-
ments of the courtier. A delicate sense, too, for the influ-
ence of nature has been claimed for him and a sensitive-
ness to physical beauty. Wyatt and Surrey are the two
particular stars of Puttenham's " new company of courtly
makers," "the two chief lanterns," he elsewhere calls
them, "to all others that have since employed their pens
upon English poesy." The other names — Thomas, Lord
Vaux, Sir Francis Bryan and Edward Somerset, Anthony
Lee, brother-in-law of Wyatt, and George Boleyn, Lord
Rochford, Queen Anne's brother, — none of them need
concern us. Nicholas Grimald is more important; for
aside from his touch with the classics and his neglect of
Petrarch, Grimald was the probable editor of the first
edition of TotteVs Miscellany (popularly so called from
the publisher) , the volume into which was gathered, long
after their writing, the lyrical poetry of Wyatt, Surrey,
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 41
and their contemporaries, besides the later verse of
Grimald himself with that of some others. Tottel's is the
earliest of the several poetical miscellanies of Elizabethan
times. First published in 1557, just before the queen's
accession, the collection went through eight editions by
1587, and was then superseded by collections of newer
poetry. Still Cousin Abraham Slender was not altogether
old-fashioned when, some ten years later, he exclaimed:
"I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs
and Sonnets here," for this was none other than this
notable collection.
The miscellany was a favorite type of book in Eliza-
beth's day. It was by no means confined merely to lyrical
poetry ; for there was the famous Mirror for Magistrates,
a collection of elegiac historical narratives in verse,
and there were books such as England's Parnassus and
Belvedere or the Garden of the Muses, both of them
treasuries of poetical quotations. The idea of a miscel-
laneous collection of poetry seemed to have been derived
from the manuscript notebooks which scholars and gen-
tlemen of culture were accustomed to keep, in which
to record their own thoughts at times, but, more com-
monly, some translated or transcribed bit of poetry which
was passing about in literary circles and which the tran-
scriber considered worthy of preservation. Jonson's
Timber^ or Discoveries, years later, was a commonplace
book in which that worthy jotted down passages trans-
lated and expanded from his private reading; and
"Shakespeare's sugared sonnets among his private
42 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
friends" attest the custom of the circulation of poetry
in manuscript. TotteVs Miscellany was followed by The
Paradise of Dainty Devices, in 1576, which ran through
nine editions by 1606; by A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant
Inventions, in 1578; and by Clement Robinson's Handful
of Pleasant Delights, the only extant issue of which dates
1584. The Paradise contained work of William Hunnis
and Richard Edwards, both of them musicians and con-
tributors to the earliest Elizabethan drama, some verse
of Gascoigne, and a poem or so by the Earl of Oxford,
who enjoyed the distinction of being the enemy of Sidney.
The work of these earlier miscellanies is the work of
apprentices, but most of them were employed on good
models. The Paradise is graver and more moral in tone
than Tottel ; A Gorgeous Gallery is less brilliant than its
title; A Handful of Pleasant Delights is "a song-book
rather than a book of poetry," and is supposed to have
been originally licensed as early as 1561. Several charm-
ing songs are here to be found; and it may be surmised
that it represents less strictly the poetry of the court than
its fellow miscellanies. The interesting thing about the
most popular miscellanies of Elizabethan lyrical poetry
consists in the fact that they represent the selective
taste of their time and bear eloquent testimony of the
diffusiveness of literary taste and appreciation.
The most striking figure in English poetry between
Wyatt and Spenser is that of George Gascoigne, courtier,
soldier, and poet, who rejoiced in the motto Tarn Marti
quam Mercurio, and distinguished himself in the drama,
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 43
in satirical and narrative poetry, as well as in the lyric.
While Gascoigne in a sense continued the line of develop-
ment set for the lyric by Wyatt and Surrey, he infused
into his poetry a spirit far more thoroughly English and
affected a return to older phrases and idioms. The smooth-
ness and ease of Gascoigne's verse show that he gave
minute attention to musical effect; and this, with a fre-
quent happiness of figure, directness and sincerity, occa-
sional passion and genuine force, sufficiently justify the
estimation in which the poet was held in his own day.
In Gascoigne the personal note becomes more pronounced.
Much of his poetry is autobiographical, and all of it
egotistic and personal to a degree rarely attained by the
dolorous complaints of the shadowy typical lovers in
TotteVs Miscellany and The Paradise of Dainty Devices.
In the year 1575 when Gascoigne, with two years yet
to live, revised the earlier edition (1573) of his Ilundreth
Sundry Flowers into the Posies of George Gascoigne,
Spenser, Greville, and Lodge were already at Cambridge
and Lyly and Peele at Oxford, which Sidney had but
recently quitted to come up to court and proceed upon
his travels abroad. Spenser had poetized for several years
and was soon to discuss with his mentor, Gabriel Harvey,
momentous questions concerning English hexameters
and the like. Lodge, with perhaps Greene and Watson,
must have been writing poetry long before each sought in
turn for literary recognition in London. Other lyrists,
who had i)rf)bably begun to write in the seventies, were
Greville, Sidney's friend, Breton, the stci)-son of Gas-
44 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
coigne, and Munday, dramatist, pamphleteer, informer,
and translator, but poet as well. Raleigh, with his high
and insolent vein, was never more than an occasional
visitor to the regions of the muses; and Churchyard,
Turbcrville, Googc, translator of eclogues, all were older
men and lyrical in no true sense.
But with all these younger poets preparing to burst
into song, metrical experiment was still more than ever
the order of the day. Gascoigne had continued the prac-
tice of the sonnet in the modified English form which
Surrey had introduced. But the editor of the first edition
of Tottel, Grimald or whoever he may have been, was so
ignorant of the form of the rondeau that he was unable
to preserve it in printing. In addition to the old short
riming measures and ballad metres, the lyrists of the
earlier anthologies adopted as a favorite the inexpressibly
tiresome "poulter's measure," an alexandrine line (i.e.,
six iambics) followed by a septenary {i.e., seven), riming
as a couplet, thus :
Who justly may rejoice in ought under the sky.
As life or lands, as friends or fruits, which only live to die ?
But clearly a metre, so literally at sixes and sevens, could
not long survive ridicule and parody, and few poems were
written in it after the eighties. Gascoigne had declared
in a sensible little treatise on the making of English verse
that "ordinarily we use no foot save the iambic," though
he recognized the existence of other ways of ordering
syllables metrically. But long before Gascoigne's time,
worthy Roger Ascham had raised the question of a possi-
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 45
ble future for English poetry, freed from "the Gothish
barbarism of rime" and practising the orderly and
established versification of the ancient Greeks and
Romans. This subject absorbed the attention and the
pens of scholars throughout Elizabeth's reign, and re-
sulted not only in the absurdities of English hexameters,
such as those of Harvey, Fraunce, and Stanihurst, but in
an admirably complete series of experiments by Sidney
and other members of what Harvey called the Areopagus
Club. Indeed, the last word on this subject was that of
the poet Daniel, who answered Campion's plea for classical
lyrical measures in all but the last year of Elizabeth's
reign. Experimentation with classical metres and the
theories about them little affected the history of the lyric.
It was otherwise with the similar experimentation of Sid-
ney and Watson in the lyrical forms of Italian poetry.^
With the year 1580, the daylight of Elizabethan liter-
ature was pouring in flood and the lyric chorus was in
full throat. And now the inventive fancy of the age in
seeking for expression hit upon certain literary modes,
often trj'ing one for the nonce to the partial exclusion of
others, and, wcarj'ing of it, turning to something new.
In the lyric the pastoral was the favorite mode up to 1590,
when it was superseded by the popularity of the sonnet.
Later came the heyday of poetry written specifically to
be set to music. Let us turn first to the pastoral. The
pastoral is not a literary form. It is really a way of
' On the RfncTal suhjcrt, see the present writer's Podic and Verse
Cniiciam of the Ilrign of (^itcin EUzahcth, 1891.
46 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
looking at life artistically, and may be represented on
canvas or in marble as it may be expressed by word in
prose or verse of different varieties. The conventions of
the pastoral ideal, with its joys of an impossible golden
age, its perennial bloom and summer, its pursuing swains
and coy and fleeting shepherdesses, are too well known to
require repetition here. Suffice it for us to recall that
pastoral poetry, like poetry of so many other forms, came
late to England from Italy and France, and to recognize
that the delicate and amorous sentiments, pervading the
pastoral no-man's land of a pleasing but conventionalized
imagination, lent themselves naturally and easily to the
expression of the lighter lyrical emotions. Spenser's fine
series of eclogues. The Shepherds^ Calendar, in print by
1579 and immediately acclaimed for its excellence, had
much to do with confirming the pastoral fashion. A
charming feature of The Calendar is the several songs of
great beauty and elaboration interlarded in the narrative
and dialogue, all of them in the pastoral mode. Nowhere
else is Spenser so full of lyrical music as in'"Perigot and
Willie's Roundelay," the "Canzon Pastoral" in praise of
Elizabeth, or the stately "Dirge for Dido," all of them
songs of The Shepherds^ Calendar. Brevity and directness
were neither of them distinguishing qualities of Spenser,
and therefore we do not find him achieving his greatest
success in the song as such. However lofty the thought
of the "Four Hymns" in honor of earthly and of heavenly
love and beauty, they are, when all has been said, little
more than a rendering in noble verse of the Platonic
m THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 47
ideas on these subjects, examined through the lenses of
Ficino's commentary. Lyrical in a deeper and wider sense
than the songs of The Calendar, though equally in the
pastoral mode, are the " Prothalaraion " and "Epitha-
lamion" (the latter signalizing his own wedding), with
their splendid sweep of intricate stanza sustained with
masterly effect and their charming, recurrent musical
refrains. Happier than Spenser in this matter of brevity
and directness was Sidney, although the experimental
character of the songs of the Arcadia, modelled, as so
many of them are, on exotic foreign models — the
madrigal, the sestina, ierza rima, to say no more of
classical experiments — precluded in most of Sidney's
pastoral lyrics more than a qualified success. It is, indeed,
to lesser men that we must look for the perfection of the
Elizabethan lyric in the pastoral mode. It was Breton
who sang:
In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,
, With a troop of damsels playing
Forth the wood forsooth a Maying;
and how, "in time of yore,"
Yea and nay was thought an oath
That was not to be doubted.
It was Marlowe who offered his shei)herdcss love,
A cap of Bowers and a kirllc
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our i)rclty lambs we pull;
48 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Fur-lined slippers for the cold
With buckles of the purest gold.
And it was Greene who asks:
If country loves such sweet desires do gain.
What lady would not love a shepherd swain ?
Among the poets to Hve long after this period in which
the pastoral ruled over lyrical poetry, none continued the
mode so persistently nor so imbued his work with its
spirit as Michael Drayton, for his talents and originality
ever to be regarded as the greatest of the followers of
Spenser, Drayton's first secular work, The Shepherd's
Garland, 1593, is entirely in the pastoral mode; and while
he wandered far from lyrical poetry in his various histori-
cal endeavors, narrative and other, much of the embel-
lishment of his famous Polyolbion, and of his fairy -poem
the Nyjnphidia, The Owl, a bird-fable, and The Man in
the Moon, a version of the story of Endymion, is of the
pastoral, at times distinctly of the lyrical, kind. Again and
again Drayton reaches lyrical success within the strict-
est limitations of the lyrical art and alike within and be-
yond the conventional bounds of lyrical subject-matter.
The "Song to Sirena," and the odes "To the Cambro-
Britans," on "Agincourt," and "To the Virginian Voy-
age" alone sufficiently attest this, even if we omit to men-
tion the famous sonnet "Since there's no help," in which
Drayton tries conclusions, and successfully, with his per-
sonal friend, Shakespeare. It is not to be wondered that,
next to Spenser, Drayton was the most popular general
poet of his day.
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 49
With some exceptions, the choicest Elizabethan lyrics
in the pastoral mode were gathered into the volume
known as England's Helicon, edited by John Bodenham in
1600 and reprinted in 1614. Besides the greater names of
Spenser and Sidney, here are to be found lyrics of Mun-
day, Breton, Constable, and Greene, of Drayton, Lodge,
Peele, Bamfield, and many others. While the pastoral
character is pervasive in England's Helicon, some earlier
poems even being " pastoralized " by such substitutions
as swain for man, or shepherd for lover, to conform to the
current fancy, there are many poems of a less specialized
type, and some marking the more recent interest in the
sonnet. England's Helicon borrowed from The Phoenix
Nest, a miscellany printed in 1593, containing many poems
of Lodge and Breton. Both of these collections disclose
a very direct contact with foreign models alike in the titles
of poems and in their metrical and stanzaic forms. Sonnet
is applied to anything; madrigal, ode, and song are em-
ployed with equal looseness; occasionallj'^ idyl, barginet
(i.e., bcrgcrct), canzon, are used with "pastoral," as pas-
toral sonnet, pastoral ode, canzon pastoral, or simply pas-
toral. Several titles of pastoral songs are derived from
popular terms for dances : as the jig, a merry irregular song
in short measure, more or less comic, sometimes sung and
danced by the clown to an accompaniment of pipe and
tabor; the hranle, in English brawl, similarly a dance of
lively nature; the roundelay, a light poem, originally a
shepherd's dance, in which a phrase is rcjx'atcd, often as
a verse or stanzaic refrain. Several titles in these collcc-
50 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
tions are English, however translated from foreign lan-
guages: such is the passion, affected by Watson, conten-
tion, complaint, lament, all sufficiently clear in meaning,
however carelessly employed. The only metre which can
be affirmed to have become in any wise identified with
the pastoral mode, is the octosyllabic iambic measure,
riming either in couplets or alternating with its deriva-
tive, heptasyllabic trochaics. Both measures are fre-
quently employed by Breton; the latter is the metre of
Barnfield's famous "Ode," "As it fell upon a day," long
erroneously attributed to Shakespeare.^ v
A favorite little verse form of the period was the
madrigal. Originally an Italian shepherd's song, the mad-
rigal had a technical significance in music as in verse.
In the latter, while the term was employed with much
looseness, the madrigal may be defined as a short inte-
gral poem of lyrical or epigrammatic character, made
up usually of a system of tercets followed by one or more
couplets, the verses commonly of two different lengths and
varied independently of the rimes, which, after the genius
of Italian, are preferably feminine. Thus,
Say gentle nymphs, that tread these mountains.
Whilst sweetly you sit playing.
Saw you my Daphne straying
Along your crystal fountains ?
If that you chance to meet her,
Kiss her and kindly greet her;
* See Arber's reprint of Barnfield, English Scholars' Library, No. 14,
1882, pp. xix ff.
IN THE ENGLAND OF TBE TUDORS 51
Then these sweet garlands take her.
And say for me, I never will forsake her.
Favorable specimens of the madrigal may be found
in Nicholas Yonge's Musica Transalpina, 1588, and
Thomas Watson's First Set oj Italian Madrigals Englished^
1590. Indeed, both of these books purport to be no more
than translations of well-known song-books by Marenzio,
Con verso, and other Italian composers.^ With the song-
books of William Byrd, publisher, musician, possibly poet
as well, the adaptation of the madrigal by English poets
and musicians set in. In the many song-books that fol-
lowed, the work of Est, Morley, Wilbye, Dowland, Jones,
Weelkes, Hume, and many others, the term madrigal vies
with song, air, ballad, ballet, canzon and canzonet, to
designate any lyric set to music.
To return to the immediate influence of contemporary
ItaliaxL-fiilins of verse on the EirzabtLiiiui lyric, besides
Sidney, the most important of these experimenters was
Thomas Watson, just mentioned for his Madrigals Eng-
lished. In addition to this work, Watson published his
Passionate Century oj Love in 1582, and, in 1593, his Tears
of Fancy. Watson is not only a Petrarchist, but a scholar
well versed in the classics; and he levies on French con-
temporary [Kjets as well. IIapi)ily for later scholarship,
there was enough of the pedant in Watson to cause him
carefully to name his sources. As to form, Watson's lyrics
are largely irregular "sonnets" of eighteen lines. His
' On this topic see F. I. Carpenter. "Thomas WaLson's Italian Madri-
Ral.i Englishi-'l, l.">f)0." .fournnl nf (Icrmanic I'kilnlogj/, ii, 323.
52 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
work is negligent and his merit as a poet lies little beyond
what he was able to take over from the foreign coffers that
he rifled so frankly. Far more purely Italianate and con-
summate as a metrist was Barnabe Barnes who, in his
Parthenope and Parthenophil, published in 1593, continues
the Italian impulse of Sidney. Parthenope and Parthe-
nophil purports to be a sequence of sonnets, but inter-
spersed are many canzons, sestinas, and odes in the rich
and exuberant manner of the Renaissance Italian poets,
rather than a mere borrowing of their ideas and phrases.
Of these three experimenters in the grafting of Italian
poetry on the stock of the English lyric, Watson translates
and little more; Barnes successfully reaches the form of
his models; Sidney alone assimilates their spirit to the
emotional processes of his own genius. In order of prior-
ity in time, these poets range, Sidney, Watson, Barnes; in
order of poetic value the last two change places and stand
below and apart from the eminence of their great fellow.
The spirit of mid-Elizabethan lyrical poetry is the
spirit of youth and the joy, the inconsequence, and the
unconsciousness of youth. This poetry is pagan, care-
free, little oppressed with the problems of life, frank in its
cult of beauty and in its delight in the brave shows of the
world. It revels in the art of song, in variety and experi-
ment in verse, in the artifices of style; it plays upon words
and elaborates ingenious figures of speech; it bubbles
with voluble joy or, if cast down, its despair or petulance
are those of childhood. An unknown poet of England's
Helicon sings:
IN THE ENGL.VND OF THE TUDORS 53
Praised be Diana's faire and harmless light.
Praised be the dews wherewith she moists the ground.
Praised be her beams, the glory of the night,
Praised be her power, by which all powers abound.
In heaven queen she is among the spheres.
She mistress-like makes all things to be pure:
Eternity in her oft change she bears;
She beauty is, by her the fair endure.
And Thomas Lodge describes the Rosalind, on which
Shakespeare was later to model Orlando's Rosalind, in
this ecstasy of a lover's delight:
With orient pearl, with ruby red.
With marble white, with sapphire blue
Her body every way is fed.
Yet soft in touch and sweet in view:
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
Nature herself her shape admires;
The gods are wounded in her sight;
And love forsakes his heavenly fires
And at her eyes his l)riind dolli light:
Heigh ho, would slic were mine!
But there were graver notes even in this early concert
of joy. Fulke Grevillc, boyhood friend of Sidney, left
behind him, years later, a miscellaneous collection of
poetry mostly lyrical, much of which must have been
written in I lie days of tlic Areopagus. Ccclica, as this
collection is railed, is only in part lyrical and remarkably
free from foreign and extraneous influences, metrical or
other. Many of these poems are characterized by a dcj)th
and intricacy of thotight llmt suggest the manner of
54 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Donne a little later. But Greville's ponderings led him
from the lyric into poetical disquisitions and into state-
craft ; J)onne retained his lyricism irj_the eloquRnrip, of
the pulpit. Another EhzaEeUian, to whom poetry was
the means to a more serious end than art, was Father
Southwell, one of the Jesuit brethren who gave at last
his life to the cause of turning England back to the
older faith. Southwell wrote in old-fashioned metres and
was as unaflFected as Greville by the prevalent Italianism,
pastoralism, and other passing poetical fashions, with the
exception of one, the " conceit." How it came to pass that
the splendid courtier Sidney, responsible for the Pe-
trarchan conceit in English poetry, should have claimed,
as one of the earliest and most certain of his disciples
in this respect, the holy Father Southwell, is one of the
things difficult for ingenious scholarship to explain. To
Southwell the lyric was a means to the worship of God
and to the uplift of the human soul struggling among the
snares and sorrows of the world. The lavishing on his
work of a fervid and ingenious imagination dignifies
Southwell at times with the utterance of a true poet.
Many a poet of the day turned from the vanities of worldly
poetry to express religious feeling in song or to translate
or imitate the Psalms of David, those accepted realiza-
tions of poetic fervency and devotion. None the less
Southwell stands forth conspicuously among Elizabeth-
ans as the only poet of rank who devoted his art undivid-
edly to what was then called "divine uses."
The conceit has already been several times mentioned
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 55
in these pages and the subject calls for discrimination.
A conceit, in the parlance of the old poets, was any strik-
ing, apt, or original figure of speech employed to illus-
trate or beautify a passage rhetorically, whether in verse
or in prose. Obviously this perfectly reasonable effort
was prone from the first to degenerate into extravagance
and effort, in which the thought was apt to be lost in the
illustration. Thus when the ink that Sidney uses runs
by its nature into Stella's name, when pain moves his
pen, and the paper is pale with despair, we have conceit
pure and simple, though doubtless born naturally enough,
as elsewhere in Sidney, of a poet's quick discernment of
likenesses and association of remote ideas. No less ex-
travagant is Juliet's wish that Night should take Romeo
cut him out in little stars.
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night;
And pay no worship to the garish sun;
though here even more certainly do we feel that the
intensity of Juliet's passion is such that a trifle like this,
bizarre though it certainly is, is carried naturally on the
impetuous current of her thoughts. When we turn to some
of the ingenuities of Donne — that of the compass for
example, in the famous "Valediction forl)idding Mourn-
ing," prolonged, effectively it must be confessed, tlirough
three or four stanziis — we do not feel quite so .sure. And
yet the habit of Donne's mind was subtle and this par-
ticular j)oem is exquisitely sincere. Southwell likens the
tears of ("lirisi lo llic jwols of Ileshbon, baths where
56
THE ENGLISH LYRIC
happy spirits dive; and, in throes of spiritual unworthi-
ness, tells how he drinks drops of the heavenly flood and
bemires his Maker with returning mud. And yet the
cause of these conceits may be attributable to many
things beside mere carelessness or bad taste. Sidney lav-
ished metaphor on his poetry, as on his prose, and failed
at times, from a romantic spirit that could brook no
restraint, to discriminate or exercise his taste. A similar
obliviousness to the means of reacliing his end character-
izes the extravagant figures in the poetry of Southwell.
On the other hand, other poets, especially later ones,
are often deliberately ingenious and the effect is that of
an imagination, mediocre at best, taxed to its extreme
effort. It is difficult to believe that an allusion by Lynche,
one of the minor sonneteers, to
The tallest ship that cuts the angry wave
And plows the seas of Saturn's second sun,
was not ingeniously wrought out, not without labor, as
Jonson would have put it, on the anvil of thought. So,
too, Cowley's words of the artificers who cut the wooden
images that adorned the temple of Jerusalem, that they
Carve the trunks and breathing shapes bestow.
Giving the trees more life than when they grow,
is assuredly not a thought that could have occurred off-
hand, or unpremeditated, or to any one whose avowed
quest was not the saying of something in a manner in
which it had not been said before. That which men do
naturally they do with grace. Excessive effort is com-
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 57
monly awkward. Hence the frequent unhappiness of the
conceit when it became a matter of inventive preparation,
not an extravagance born of uncontrolled imagination;
hence its frequent preposterousness and want of taste.
It is a mistake to ascribe the introduction of the conceit
to any one English poet, or to hold that Gongora, Marino,
or any other foreign poet is specifically responsible for it
in English literature. The conceit developed under the
influence of Petrarch, whose personal good taste for the
most part preserved him from its excesses. It was the
Petrarchists, whether in Italy, France, or England, that
countenanced and developed the conceit in their en-
deavor to outdo the hyperbole of their master's ingenious
imagery' .
There were other artificialities besides the conceit in
the poetrj' of Elizabeth's time which may be studied in
Sidney and many of his successors. One was the echo-
sonnet. Another construction was the sheaf, as it has been
called, in which a series of comparisons are made in suc-
cession, gathered together and then applied in an equal
number of applications. An elaborate development of this
ingenuity is to be found in a poem of two long stanzas
by Edmund Bolton entitled "A Palinode," in which such
a series of similitudes with their ai)i)lications are bandied
back and forth several times with an inventive cleverness
fully justified in a hai)py and not unpoetic result.
As wilhoroth tlip primro.sc by the river.
As fadeth summer's sun from ^'i'linR foimtains,
As vanishelh tlic light-blown bubble ever,
58 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains:
So melts, so vanisheth, so fades, so withers.
The rose, the shine, the bubble, and the snow.
Of praise, pomp, glory, joy, which short life gathers.
Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy.
The withered primrose by the mourning river.
The faded summer's sun from weeping fountains.
The light-blown bubble vanished for ever.
The molten snow upon the naked mountains.
Are emblems that the treasures we uplay.
Soon wither, vanish, fade, and melt away.^
The game is further pursued, and to its logical finish, in
a second stanza of equal elaboration. But this should
suffice for what the more serious spirits of the time very
properly called "these toys."
The form specifically consecrated to serious lyrical ex-
pression in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign was the
sonnet. We have noted that Wyatt is responsible for the
introduction of the sonnet into English; Surrey for that
change in the arrangement of rimes that transformed it
into a series of three alternately riming quatrains con-
cluded with a couplet. Sidney practised the sonnet in
nearly every variety of rime-arrangement which the in-
genuity of Italian (and French) sonneteers had invented
before him. And to Sidney must be referred the first
writing in English of a series or sequence of sonnets de-
voted to the details of the progress of an affair of the
heart. Sidney's sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella,
was most probably written during the years 1581, 1582,
* See F. E. Schelling, A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics, Boston, 1895,
p. 110.
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 59
and the earlier part of 1583. It was not published until
the year 1591, three years after the poet's death, and
then by Nash, the procurer of the copy. The story con-
veyed in Astrophel and Stella purports to be the autobio-
graphy of Sidney's love for Lady Penelope Devereux,
whom he lost by not knowing his own heart. The lady
contracted an unhappy marriage with Lord Rich, and
Sidney subsequently married a daughter of Sir Francis
Walsingham. Indubitably Sidney would never thus have
addressed Penelope Devereux had not the cult of Pla-
tonic love descended to him through Petrarch and the
rest of the Italian and French sonneteers as one of the
received literary fashions of his time. But it scarcely
follows therefore that the poignant touches of feeling in
which these sonnets abound must be interpreted merely
as evanescent lyrical expressions of the new cult.^ Even
less justi6able seems the attitude that shudders at a
story which, taken in its entirety, is singularly pure and
elevated above the sordid pruriency of a vulgar liaison.
Indeed, these sonnets produce in the reader who is un-
biassed by preconceptions and scholarly ratiocinations,
* See especially J. B. Fletcher, "Did Sidney love Stell.i," reprinted in
his volume. The licligion of Beauty in Woman ; and S. Lee, Elizabethan
Sonncl.i, loot, Wesltninster, i, xliii, who denies to the series "any serious
autobiograi)hical significance." The argument of Fletcher from the
analogy of Shakespeare's sincere n-[)n'sr-ntatioti of the jjassion of Romeo
and Juliet seems to the present writer hardly in point. Sidney was
not a dramatist, nor did he pretend to be one. Whether other men
wrote sonnets to ladies whom we may discover, as Byron discovered
Junius, to he "n()l)o<ly at all," is nothing to the purpose.
60 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the effect of a page from an actual lover's story, and it
is difficult, in view of the manner of man that we know
Sidney to have been — his directness, his honesty and
integrity, his outspokenness, and need for expression in
art — to accept his sonnets for anything else. In his art,
however, Sidney is frankly a Petrarchist, and to him is
to be referred, as already suggested, the popularizing of
*' the conceit." But to Sidney is likewise referable the ele-
vation of the sonnet into one of the supreme utterances
of English lyrical emotion ; for metaphor, ingenuity, and
toying with the word are banished again and again in the
intense lyrical moments of Sidney's poetry.
With the publication of Sidney's Astrophel, the sonnet
craze is upon us, and every poetling before long was try-
ing his 'prentice hand and simulating the throes and
agonies of the lyric of love with the intervention of clever
Italians and Frenchmen who had done the thing so well
before him. It has recently been shown that the French
lyrical poets were imitated and translated quite as much
as the Italian by the lyrists of the age of Elizabeth, and
that much of the Petrarchism of the sonneteers came
deviously to England by way of French intermediaries.*
Thus the three earliest sonnet sequences of any import-
ance to follow Sidney, Daniel's Delia, Constable's Diana,
and Drayton's Idea (all in print by 1594), took over the
* On the general subject see A. H. Upham, The French Influence in
Engli.ih Literature, 1908. [)[). 81 ff. ; Lee, The French lienais.tance in
England, 1910, pp. 25.5 ff. ; and L. E. Kastner, in the Modern Language
Review. October, 1907, to January, 1910.
m THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 61
titles respectively of the Delie of Seve, the Diane of Des-
portes, and VIdee of Claude de Pontuox; and their titles
were not their only borrowings. Lodge, in his Phillis
Honored with Pastoral Sonnets, 1593, is the arch purveyor
of lyrical merchandise which by the strict decalogue of
modern criticism — a decalogue as unknown to the poets
as to the buccaneers of Elizabeth's time — should be
labelled "made in France." Delia is graceful and conven-
tional like the rest of Daniel's poetry and distinguished
at times by a fine aptitude for the phrase. Drayton
has already received mention among the pastoralists as
one of the earliest and most successful of the followers
of Spenser. In his Idea's Mirror (often reprinted) he is
alike more original and more unequal than Daniel, but
achieves at times some of the finest sonnets of his time.
After the sonnets of Sidney and Shakespeare, the Amoretti
are less specifically imitative while quite as Italianate as
the minor sequences. As to the significance of Spenser's
sonnets at least we are in no danger of going astray.
They were addressed to Elizabeth Boyle, the lady whom
the poet courted and won for his wife, and require
neither symbolism, theory, nor destructive ingenuity to
elucidate or explain to nuught their indubitable meaning.
The greater num})er of sonnet sequences are amorous,
ordered to tell with more or less distinctness a story of
courtship having its basis in actual fact, more frequently
disjointed or purely fanciful, sometimes little more than
a collection of independent sonnets on the common theme
of love. But tiic Elizabethan sonnet was devoted to
Q2 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
other services than those of Venus. An interesting series
of sonnets, dedicatory, and occasional, might be garnered
from the books of the age, and the devotional sonnet
finds a respectable representation in Constable's Spirit-
ual Soniiets, 1593, Barnes's Divine Century of Spiritual
Sonnets, 1595, and in the scattered sonnets on religious
subjects by Donne and several lesser men. Finally, Chap-
man in a Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy, 1594, elo-
quently criticises the exclusion of more serious themes
from the love poetry of the day, and Sir John Davies
(himself the author of an mgenious and poetical series
of acrostics on Queen Elizabeth's name, Astrcea), in his
Gulling Sonnets, of the next year, laughs at the whole
craze and parodies it.
Nor was the conventional sonnet of the age an unfit
theme for satire, with its lists of the beloved's perfections,
its hackneyed or else contorted and far-fetched imagery,
its unoriginality and tiresome repetitions. Daniel thus
sings with the sweet average sentimentality of his kind:
Restore thy tresses to the golden ore.
Yield Cytherea's son those arcs of love.
Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore.
And to the orient do thy pearls rcjiove.
Yield thy hands' pride unto the ivory white.
To Arabian odors give thy broalhing sweet.
Restore thy blush unto Aurora bright,
To Thetis give the honor of thy feet;
Let Venus have thy graces her resigned,
And thy sweet voice give bark unto the spheres;
But yet restore thy fierce and cruel mind
To Hyrcan tigers and to ruthless bears;
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 63
Yield to the marble thy hard heart again:
So shalt thou cease to plague, and I to pain.
On which Jonson saturninely remarks: "You that tell
your mistress, her beauty is all composed of theft; her
hair stole from Apollo's goldy-locks; her white and red,
lilies and roses stolen out of Paradise; her eyes two stars,
plucked from the sky; her nose the gnomen of Love's dial
that tells you how the clock of your heart goes " and so on. ^
The overwrought similitudes of the tribe of sonneteers,
master though he was himself of all their ingenious graces,
stung Shakespeare likewise to these honest words:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, wliy then her breasts arc dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd red and white.
But no such ro.ses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. '
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
Tliiit music hath a far more pleasing sound ; .
I grant I never saw a goddess go.
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she beliefl with false compare.
Still, in aptness of word, happiness of phrase, in beauty
of sentiment, and occasional nobility of thought it would
be difficult to find anywhere, even with the two or three
greatest names omitted, a body of lyrical verse the equal
of the Elizabethan sonnet. Daniel, Donn(;, Drayton,
' See Daniel, Delia, sonnet XIX, and Jonson, Cijnthinii Revels, V, iv.
61 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Barnes, Barnfield, Lodge, and even at times lesser men,
practised the sonnet in this age with a mastery of tech-
nique and a perfection of expression which remains the
despair of our own metrically less facile time.
Recalling the poetic fervor of Sidney, the grace and
beauty of Spenser's Amoretti, and the many excellences
and felicities of the minor sonneteers, the master sonnet
sequence of the age was of course Shakespeare's, whose
Sonnets were printed in 1609, well after the fashion had
waned, although mostly written within the closing dec-
ade of the old queen's reign. About Shakespeare's Son-
nets, as about everything else Shakespearean, there has
been doubt, mystery, construction and demolition of the-
ory, with endless argument, rejoinder and surrejoinder.
Theories on the subject need little concern us here; the
facts are disputed and most of the inferences by some-
one denied. The sonnets, as we have them, are made up
of two series: the first and shorter addressed to a youth
in a tone of adulation, unusual in any age, impossible in
ours; the second addressed to a dark and imperious lady in
a desperate abandonment to passion. Who these person-
ages were — if, indeed, they were other than creatures of
that fertile dramatic imagination that was Shakespeare's
— we really do not know; and one of many guesses is at
least as good as any other where evidences are so slight
and theorizing so easy. It is to be remembered that
among all men that have written, Shakespeare most read-
ily could have achieved that "notable feigning" that
"gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name";
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 65
and that it is no more remarkable that he should have
written a sequence of sonnets that throb with a passion
that persuades wise men that they are autobiographical
than that he should have depicted, again and again, with
equal cogency and vivacity, tales of passion whose known
sources assure us of their objectivity. If we must accept
the Sonnets of Shakespeare as a page from the history
of his own heart, terrible although their revelation, they
leave no impression of a permanent perversion of that
clear insight into life, such as too often follows an enslave-
ment to sin with its consequent distortion of the features
of good and evil. No question in poetry is more difficult
than the relations of artistic expression to subjective
reality, and on none is it easier or more futile to dogma-
tize. A subjective interpretation of the Sonnets of Shake-
speare is not demanded by the facts as we know them, by
the poetical practices of the time, or by any analogy to be
derived from the author's life or from his dramatic en-
deavors. It remains for us to give the greatest interpre-
ter of the passions of men the benefit of that charity which
we extend to lesser men, and to affirm that there is no-
thing to necessitate an autobiographical interpretation
of these incomparable sonnets of passion. Shakespeare's
Sonnets are by no means all of equal poetic value; but the
best, for depth and fullness of thought, for mastery of
poetical phrase, at times for the white heat of passion and
perfection of literary finish, rise above the erotic poetry of
their own age as thoy serve yet for the goal and ultimate
exemf)lar of tlicir kind.
66 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
/^ The lyrical poetry of Shakespeare, however, is not con-
fined to the sonnets, but recurs again and again both in the
songs of the plays and in the small number of poems attrib-
uted to him in The Passionate Pilgrim and in Chester's
Love's Martyr. The range of Shakespeare as a lyrist, if we
include the deeper tones of the sonnets, is almost that of
Shakespeare the dramatist. Indeed, few moods are un-
touched in the lyrics of the plays, which range from Auto-
lycus with his balladry of the fair and country-side and
the snatches of folk-song which add pathos to the sad
plight of Ophelia, to the sea-knell of The Tempest and the
exquisite funeral song of Imogen. Nor are the metrical
settings of Shakespeare's lyrics less varied than the moods
that they celebrate; and the form is always fitted to the
theme. In an age when every dramatist could turn a
lyric to serve his purpose, Shakespeare excelled all com-
petitors, and this less by sheer originality than by the
power, equally exemplified in his dramas, of furnishing
artistic raiment to traditional material. Again and again
Shakespeare takes some unconsidered trifle of folk-song
and transmutes it into a thing of permanent poetic value,
or works over some hackneyed theme, giving to it with a
new form a currency for all time. In the lyric as else-
where, it is not so much the possession of new or startling
qualities that characterizes the artistic endowment of
Shakespeare as it is the superlative degree in which he is
endowed with qualities which are ordinarily associated
with the sanity of talent as contrasted with the ab-
normality of genius. It is the artistic address, the natu-
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 67
ralness and reasonableness with which he employs what
is his and what has been other men's, that is alike the
despair of imitation and analysis.
There remains one lyrist, strictly of the reign of Eliza-
beth, wliQ_added to the concert of his time a new and
origijaaLrLote. This was John Donne, later the famous
doctor of divinity and Dean of St. Paul's. InJiis^earligE,
years the poetry of Donne was wholly secular and free,
save for conceits, from the^ ^dominant influences that
characterized his contemporaries. Donne, who was nine
years j^ounger than Shakespeare, enjoyed unusual advant-
ages in his education at Oxford and in the private study of
languages, divinity, and dialectics. Possessed of a compe-
tence, Donne passed his time as a gentleman of fashion and
made an early reputation as a wit and a poet. His poetry,
indeed, seems to have been well known before any of it
had appeared in print; and later his romantic love-match
and his call to the church years after, enhanced his reputa-
tion for a kind of poetry which the years of his gravity
and churchmanship would fain have disavowed. The
lyrical poetry of Donne is to be found in his songs and son-
nets, his divine poems, and in The Anatomy of the World,
— in his elegies, his epilhalamia, even to a certain ex-
tent in his satires and letters in verse. Indeed, if we are
to lay stress on the subjective quality of the lyric, Donne
is lyricuil throughout. In the songs and sonnets Donne's
subject is love, in which he api)cars to have experimented
in Ills youth, impelled loss, we may believe, by his pas-
sions than by a certain curiosity which led him likewise
68 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
into the study of mediseval sciences and into the byways
of heretical divinity. There is a subtle and original cyn-
icism, with all their passion, about many of these love
lyrics, a weird intensity and abandon, such as English
poetry had not known before Donne's time. But with
respect to his cynicism and scepticism as to human pas-
sion, it is to be remembered that no ly rist has so glorified
the constancy and devotion of pure love as Donne, whose
own life exemplified alike its beauty and its glory. In The
Anatomy of the World the theme is death in its abstract
and universal significance, despite the circumstance that
the poem was undertaken as a tribute to the memory of
a young maiden. Mistress Elizabeth Drury, whom, char-
acteristically, Donne had never even so much as seen.
The two "Anniversaries," as the parts are called, make
this a sustained poem of considerable length in decasyl-
labic couplets. None the less, it would be diflScult to find
a purer specimen of the lyric of intellectualized emotion,
sublimed to the abstract.
The lyrical poetry of Donne is characterized by several
qualities not known to the Renaissance spirit of the
Petrarchists, the pastoralists, and the sonneteers. For
example, he rejects most of the poetical furniture, so to
speak, in the houses of the poets..^ He cares nothing for
the descriptive epithet Jxawn from life or for the accepted
poeti^aLdiction j)f choice, archaic, and euphonious words,
or for_JJie garniture of classical story and allusion.
Equally free is he from the slightest interest in nature
or in similitudes drawn from nature; while as to man in
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 69
relation to man, it may be affirmed that Donne is freer
from any touch of the dramatic than any other poet of his
time or perhaps any EngHsh poet of any other time. In
place of all these things discarded, he enriched the lyrical
poetry of his day with a new poetic style of surprising di-
rectness, with a vocabulary free from the accepted smooth-
ness and over-indulgence in figure, and with a versifica-
tion, abrupt and harsh at times, but always vigorous.
Donne applied to the lyric the freedom, in a word, of the
best dramatic verse of his day. Above all, he furnished
lyrical poetry with a totally new order of metaphor, drawn
from his study of the dialectics of divinity and especially
from the technical nomenclature of contemporary science.
In the difficult and often recondite allusions of Donne's
poetry the literature of his successors found a new and
undiscovered mine, and his influence became patent and
widespread in the lyric almost before he could have been
well aware of it himself. To Donne, his total break with
the past, his mannerisms, ingenious similitudes, even, to
some extent, his cynicism — however some of it may
have been an affectation of his wit — were genuine and
innate qualities of his genius; in his imitators they often
degenerated into sheer mannerism and into a struggle
after the ingenious and that which had never been
said before. It was this that led, years after, to the in-
discriminate dubbing of lliis whole poetical perversity
l)y the title, " the metaphysical school of poetry." Donne
is dislinguish.il.Ic froin I lie I'clrarchisls that went before,
as he is dislinguishable from the "metaphysicals" that
70 TIIE ENGLISH LYRIC
came after. He is a notable poet whose lyrical art stands
equally in contrast with the refined worship of beauty
idealized that characterized Spenser, and with the sweeter
music and more consummate artistry of the lyrical poetry
of Shakespeare.
In contemplating the lyrical activity of the reign of
/Queen Elizabeth, a striking feature is the general diffu-
sion of the gift of song. Poetry occupied the statesman in
the hours of his diversion and lured the scholar from his
books; it solaced the prisoner in his cell and quickened the
devotions of the churchman and the martyr. Nobles and
councilors of state, such as Oxford and Essex, courtiers like
Sidney and Raleigh, shared this gift with the playwrights,
pamphleteers, and musicians, with Dekker, Greene,
Nash, Dowland, Campion, and lesser men. Indeed, to
few among the greater poets of the day was the gift of
song denied ; and eflFort, in even the least, not infrequently
achieved success. Greville, pondering on philosophi-
cal statecraft; Daniel and Drayton, engaged in turning
English history into verse, the latter for years bending
his poetical talents to the topographical glorification of
every hill and stream of his beloved country; Chapman,
laborious translator and dramatist, poet of difficult epi-
cedes and occasional verses — each could write a lyric
with admirable success, though Chapman, for the most
part, stood aloof from so trivial an employment of the
divine gift of poetry. To say nothing of the fine mass of
anonymous verse to be found in almost any lyrical antho-
logy of the time, the ordinarily uninspired, who toiled
IN THE ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS 71
with pedestrian muse along the trodden highways of con-
temporary literary production, were visited at times by
genuine inspiration and reached, each beyond himself, to
excellence. Thus Joshua Sylvester, devoted translator of
him whom the age called "the divine Du Bartas," wrote
one sonnet, "Were I as base as is the lowly plain," which
is worth all his religious epical labors; Samuel Rowlands,
hack-pamphleteer, is author of a charming lullaby; and
many a name, otherwise unknown, is memorable for a
single poem. On the other hand, not less striking is the
range of topic included in this remarkable body of verse.
Of the erotic lyric with its myriad changes of mood we
have heard, and of hymn and song uplifted to the expres-
sion of religious emotion. But Dekker sang, with a music
all but perfect, of vice and virtue as the world rates them,
and of that "sweet content" which his life of incessant
care and sorrow could so little have known. It was Nash,
master that he was of the vituperative journalism of the
pamphlet, who sang now blithely of the springtime in Lon-
don streets, now in terms funereal of that terrible visitant,
the plague that depopulated the city and drove thousands
into exile. And it was Drayton, about the close of the
reign, who epitomized the national pride and patriotism
that had begotten the splendid line of the chronicle
plays on the deeds of English kings, in the fine martial
"Ode" on the Battle of Agincourt wherein we hear tiie
very tread of armies. And yet this variety of subject,
form, and treatment, with all its ingeniousness and origi-
nality at times, is often marred by inecjuality in execution.
72 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
a tendency on the part of the minor poets to a reitera-
tion of thought and figure, and to a highly conventional-
ized diction. This literature has been called a literature
of great impact; and it must be confessed that again and
again we find a splendid opening or a perfect initial
stanza spoiled by flagging efi'ort, overdone or negligently
slighted to an inadequate conclusion. But this was to
be anticipated in the poetry of a vigorous and imagina-
tive adolescence; and, when all is said, it is amazing to
what an extent the lyrical poetry of this age remains
vital and fraught with a poetic message as sure, as pre-
cious, and as fruitful as when it sprang from the hearts
and brains of its ardent and buoyant creators.
CHAPTER IV
THE LYRIC IN THE REIGNS OF THE FIRST TWO STUART
MONARCHS
HE conditions that made the lyric of the latter
years of Elizabeth what it was continued into
the reign of King James, although the pasto-
ral lyric, save for some reminiscences of poets
such as Drayton and Browne of Tavistock, was now
definitely a thing of the past, and no sequence of sonnets
of any importance (if we except those of two belated
Scotchmen, Drummond and Stiriing) dates later in compo-
sition than 1600. The song-books, however, continued in
ever increasing popularity, and among the musicians who
were also their own poets in these dainty products of the
wedded arts, Thomas Campion appeared, the most suc-
cessful writer of songs of his age. Campion, like his tute-
lary god Apollo, combined with his lyrical art and music,
repute as a physician as well. He had written a successful
work on counterpoint and had fired a last gun in favor of
classical versification applied to English poetry. With the
inconsistency of a true artist he now demonstrated his
ubility to write charmingly in the usually accepted Eng-
lish lyrical measures, exhibiting a lightness of touch and
a metrical competency that ])lace him first among the
lyrists of his [)articular class. Cami)ion seems more the
74 THE ENGLISH LYRIC.
disciple of Catullus and Anacreon and less an imitator of
Petrarch and the French and Italian Petrarchists than
most of his brethren. He is neither deep nor troubled
with questionings even in his sweet and grave poems that
treat of religious themes. While not a mere hedonist,
from being which, with its often attendant grossness.
Campion's delicate taste preserves him, his sentiments
are always those of a lover and worshipper of beauty,
however he may breathe in with his enjoyment thereof
the sense of its fragility and vanity. In Campion, as was
to be expected, the words are always put together with a
sense of their value in song; and his Airs, of which he
produced no less than four books up to 1619, display an
equal recognition of the art of song in its verbal applica-
tions. As we turn over the song-books of Campion's many
imitators and rivals, we meet with the names of Dowland,
Weelkes, Hume, Bateson, Robert Jones, and many more.
John Dowland was a lutenist, famous at home and abroad,
an artist who betrayed those mixed traits of the artistic
temperament which are so trying at times to the less
gifted. Of Hume all we know is that he is described as a
captain ; of Jones only that several of the lyrics of his song-
books are of unusual loveliness. To what extent these
cultivated musicians were their own poets, as certainly
was true of Campion, we are not definitely informed.
Among the poets of the early days of James who achieved
for themselves success was William Drummond, the Scot-
tish friend of Jonson, whose lyrical verse was collected
and published in 1616, the year of the death of Shake-
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 75
speare, Drummond is a belated Petrarchist and follower
of Sidney and the sonneteers. He exhibits a certain in-
genuity and poetical aptness of his own alike in subject
and figure, but maintains the old-fashioned Italian forms
of verse, being indeed the last writer of note to employ
the madrigal. Drummond is often happily effective, if
never really great. A lesser poet and even more purely
imitative was Sir William Alexander of Menstrie, later
Earl of Stirling, another Scotchman to follow in the wake
of English lyrical fashion. His Aurora, a series of sonnets
interspersed with songs and elegies, of uncertain date of
writing, was first published in 1604, Stirling came too
late and wrote too much. Many things are good in him;
more, perhaps, than the casual reader might be likely to
discover. Of Sir Robert Ayton, a third Scottish poet,
secretary to the queen of King James, Anne of Denmark,
one lyric ("I do confess thou 'rt smooth and fair") is
generally known. Ayton has further been reputed (among
several) the author of the original of "Auld Lang Syne."
However the rediscovery of ancient literature and art
may have kindled the imagination of the Renaissance,
the practice of Renaissance poets had, least of all things
in it, the qualities of repose, design, and finish. Feeling
and passion, the beauty of the world, and the glory and
radiance of that physical beauty, these were their themes,
and their spirit rode lightly the crest of the wave of the
present, looking neither before nor after. Even where
there is a large show of design, as in The Fairy Queen, and
as serious and godly an intention as ever (luickened the
76 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
dreams of a poet, we feel that much of this is futile and
that the real preoccupation of this exquisite artificer in
words is in the delicate and beautiful details of the mo-
ment in which his wider purposes are only too often ob-
scured if not totally lost. In short, the Spenserian cult of
beauty, which well typifies the lesser ideals of the minor
poets who were Spenser's contemporaries, is illustrated in
this attitude of the devotee at beauty's altar rather than
by that of the student of beauty's laws. Elaborate, pic-
torial is this art, subdued to the melody of words and to
the delights of the senses; diffuse, ornate, and enamored
of the iridescence of change and of the grace of stately
motion; but careless whither it go or if the resulting narra-
tive, description, or emotion in any wise justify its devious
wanderings. This is why the Spenserians and their kind
among the lyrists often know not when to hold the hand,
entranced with their gentle task; why their figures of
speech are lines too prolonged, their poems, stanzas in
overplus, and their whole art weighted at times with the
gauds and jewels of elaborate artistry to the disorder of
the pattern or design. It was Donne's consciousness of
all this that caused him (as we have seen), in the nine-
ties, to discard the hallowed mannerisms of pastoralists
and sonneteers. And in discarding these superficialities
of style, he discarded their superficialities of thought,
substituting the actual experiences and emotions of his
strange personality, clothed in the stranger garb of illus-
tration drawn from contemporary abstractions of scien-
tific and philosophic thought. Ben Jonson, in his lyrical
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 77
poetry a little later, took up a contrasted position of criti-
cism towards the conventional lyric of the moment, a
position not unlike his professional attitude towards the
amateurish spirit of much of the drama contemporaneous.
Ten years the junior of Shakespeare, twenty years younger
than Spenser, Jonson combined a conservative temper
with a classical education, less unusual in his day for its
thoroughness than for the practical applications that he
made of it as a poet, dramatist, and critic. To describe
Jonson as a man preposterously reactionary and believing
that in the ancients alone can the modern world find its
guide in philosophy and in the arts, is to misread alike
his general practice and his theory explicitly laid down.
Not only did he know his classics and carry his knowledge
with an ease acquired by few scholars, but he understood,
too, the conditions of the modern world and believed that
literature in England could find progress and perfection
only in a development distinctly modern and English.
Jonson recognized, however, that the ancients had again
and again set an example and reached a success in certain
forms of literature which it was well for the modern world
to know and, if possible, to emulate. There was an estab-
lished way of writing the epigram, for example, the satire,
and the lyric, which Martial, Juvenal, Horace, and Catul-
lus knew and practised, each in his own manner. Without
merely imitating, and in no wise attempting exotic verses
(which Jonson's good sense reprobated), why should not
English poctrj'' profit by sufh models and cease to do igiio-
rantly and amateurislily what had already been established
78 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
so well by the best literary craft? It is impossible not to
sympathize with Jonson's point of view when we take into
consideration, not those happy specimens of our literature
that triumphed over the unstable ideals of merely roman-
tic art, but the average wanderings of untrained talent
and the slipshod art that compels us to rate so many of
the Elizabethans with allowances for their inequality and
grant them a qualified fame, preserved in the herbariums
of the anthologies.
As we turn from the theory of Jonson to his practice of
the lyric, we recognize the loss in spontaneity and natural-
ness which art conforming to preconceived standards
must always suffer. Jons on's best lyrics are finished and
informed w^th a sense of design; the idea is often both
happy and novel, and carried out with artistic logic and
insistent completeness. Metrically felicitous, impeccable
in diction, possessed of grace, and at times even of light-
ness, there is none the less about the Jonsonian lyric a
certain stiffness and artifice from which many lyrists of
half his note, some of them his disciples, are happily free.
Again and again, too, Jonson's lyrics trespass in their
point and wit on the domain of the epigram, in which
their author stands the acknowledged master of his time.
The famous "Drink to me only with thine eyes," is of the
essence of the epigram of compliment, and the fine con-
trast of "Still to be neat, still to be drest" is of much the
same quality, despite the lyrical outburst of the second
stanza which sinks again with the last lines to a rational-
ized statement.
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 79
Give me a look, give me a face.
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th' adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
There is no tenderer little poem in the language than
Jonson's "Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, a child of Queen
Elizabeth's chapel," who died when "years he numbered
scarce thirteen," already famed as "the stage's jewel."
At the other extreme, Jonson's lyrics touch and overlap
that debatable region, the didactic, offering in poems such
as the noble " Epode," " Not to know vice at all," or in the
"Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Gary and Sir Henry
Morison," the best possible examples to those who would
include intellectualized sentiment in the spacious domain
of lyrical poetry.
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, cloth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year.
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Allhough it fail and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In Hinall proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.
It is in such passages as these (from the "Ode" just men-
tioned) that we find Jonson poetically at his best; though
there arc few provinces in grncral literalure that his re-
doubtable energy did not essay to conquer for his own.
80 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Jonson's lyrical poetry is contained in the sections of the
folio of 1642 entitled "The Forest" and "Underwoods."
His plays, and the masques in particular, yield many
other examples of admirable poetry; but the songs of the
masques, lyrical though they are, from their adaptation
to the context and the special occasion, seldom bear
excision from their places.
It would be rash to affirm that Jonson gave form to the
English lyric, recalling, as we must, the metrical experi-
ments from Wyatt to Sidney and Watson, the successes
of the pastoralists, the sonneteers, and the poets who wrote
lyrics to be set to music. Even Donne, anathematized as
he was by Jonson for not keeping the regular tread of his
measure, and misjudged by the precisians ever since, was
often peculiarly happy in the choice of his stanzas and in
the invention of new stanzaic forms. ^ And yet a con-
sciousness comes into English lyrical art with Jonson, not
recognizable before; for Jonson, in a sense, is the father of
those light and pleasing applications of poetry to the situ-
ations and predicaments of cultivated life, the epigram,
the epitaph (when not too solemn), occasional verse in its
thousand applications, to which was later to be given the
title vers de societe ; precisely as Jonson, in a larger sphere
than that of any one form of his literary art, is the centre
from which emanated the restrictive spirit in reaction
against the artistic excesses of the Renaissance, the influ-
ence which, working through his imitators and disciples
1 See, for exami)le, W. F. Melton, The Rhetoric oj John Donne's
Verse, Baltimore, 190C.
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 81
in ever widening circles, triumphed at the Restoration,
and, if it silenced the poetry of the imagination for a time,
wrought its good to the rational and critical literature of
our tongue.
But this new restrictive force in poetry was little felt
in the earlier years of King James, with Daniel, despite a
certain classical taste and reserve, writing lyrics in the
approved Renaissance manner, and Drayton continuing
the Spenserian pastoral. Indeed, the spirit of Spenser
continued for years the most potent influence on poetry,
inspiring alike the sacred and the profane allegory of
Giles and Phineas Fletcher, the chorographical labors
of Drayton upon his Polyolbion, besides liis pastorals, and
those of a new group of younger poets, William Browne of
Tavistock, George Wither, the recently discovered William
Basse, and Christopher Brooke. This school was essen-
tially narrative, allegorical, and diffuse, and given to the
cult of nature in her gentler aspects. There was not much
place for the lyric among them; and yet Giles Fletcher
the Younger in his ChrisVs Victory and Triumj)h reached
excellence in one song at least, the one beginning "Love
is the blossom where there blows," and his brother
Phineas again and again sustains the intricate allegories
of The Purple Island with flights of truly lyrical quality
and beauty. As to the later pastoralists, just mentioned,
Browne wrote charming lyrics in his Briiannia\s Pastorals,
in his one masque, and elsewhere; whilst Wither, in Fidelia,
101.5, and Philaretr,}C>]9, revealed a copious imagery de-
voted to the cult of beauty, a ready verse, and a fluency
82 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
of poetic diction, quite amazing in the author of the bald
religious verse that we have at his hands and the satirical
and controversial Puritanism of other specimens of his
work. Neither Basse nor Brooke is memorable save for
his association with greater men. Commendatory verses
of the former precede the first folio of Shakespeare's
plays; Christopher Brooke was the friend of Donne.
If we turn now once more to "the sons of Ben" and to
the disciples of Donne, we find both traceable, with cer-
tain interminglings, especially in the lyric and its kindred
form, the epigram, throughout the age and quite to the
Restoration. Thus Browne himself, with all his Spenser,
wrote epigrams of so truly Jonsonian a model that one
of them, the famous "Epitaph on the Countess of Pem-
broke," "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," has been
time out of mind erroneously attributed to Jonson.*
1 This famous epitaph was first published in Osborne's Traditional
Memoirs of the Reign of King James, 1658, p. 78, and also included in
the Poems of the countess's son, William Earl of Pembroke, and Sir
Benjamin Rudyerd in 1660, p. 66; but "in neither volume is there any
indication of authorship." Jonson's claim to it rests solely on Whalley,
the editor of the first critical edition of Jonson, who alleges a tradition
to the effect that Jonson wrote it, but offers no proof or reference. On
the other hand, in Aubrey's Memoirs of Natural Remarks on Wilts (ed.
Britton, 1847, p. 90), the epigram is said to have been "made by Mr.
William Browne who wrote the Pastorals" {Notes and Queries, Ser. i, iii,
262) ; and Mr. Goodwin, the most recent editor of Browne, quotes the
following lines from this poet's Elegy on Charles I^ord Herbert, a grandson
of the countess, to show that Browne himself alludes to his authorship of
the epigram. The passage runs:
And since my weak and saddest verse
Was worthy thought to grace thy grandam's hearse.
Accept of this.
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 83
Richard Brome, Jonson's body servant, lit his slender
lyrical flame, hke the torch of his abler comedies, at the
altar of Jonson; whilst Cartwright, Randolph, and even
Waller, with many lesser men, might claim the same august
kinship, if not by genius, at least by adoption. Of Carew
and Herrick, truest of "the sons of Ben," we shall hear
more below. As to Donne, his influence, from the postur-
ing and effort which it frequently begot in his imitators,
is even more readily discernible, prompting alike the cyni-
cal note of some of Beaumont's lyrics, such ingenuities
perhaps as Jonson's own "Hour-Glass" and his humorous
contention that "Women are but Men's Shadows," and
leading on, as we shall see, to the contortions of Quarlcs,
the transfigured conceits of Herbert, the confusions of
Crashaw, and the veritably "metaphysical poetry" of
Cowley.
The old drama from the first furnished many oppor-
tunities for the writing of incidental lyrics, and there is
scarcely a i)laywright of average reputation who has not
contributed his lyrical poctrj' to the general flood of song.
Of Shakespeare's superlative gift in this kind, note has
already been taken; of Marlowe's single, perfect little pas-
toral lyric, and of Dekker's songs, so choice and so few.
'J'homas Heywood possessed an almost equally clear run-
nel of song, in which wc catch at times a sense for nature,
premonitory of things afar off to come; while in Webster's
two "Dirges," contributed, one to each of the two over-
powering tragedies that have made his name immortal,
we have an atmosphere of weird terror equalled only in
8i THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the grotesque lyricism of the witches of Macbeth. Next
to Shakespeare among his successors, John Fletcher could
best turn a lyric; indeed, so much is his art in this respect
like Shakespeare's later manner that it is not to be won-
dered that authorship has been made a matter of question
in the beautiful "Bridal Song" in The Two Noble Kins-
men. Fletcher's range is only less than Shakespeare's, as
his lyrics incidental to his plays are fewer in number.
Fletcher hesitates not to take an old subject and find new
pretty things to say on the endless theme "what is love? "
or to conclude the series of a hackneyed tournament son-
net on "Care-Charmer Sleep" with a new treatment,
nothing inferior. His "God Lyseus ever young" deserves
a place beside Jonson's "Queen and huntress chaste and
fair " or Shakespeare's " Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne " ;
and it was doubtless to Fletcher's fine lines on melancholy,
"Hence all you vain delights," with their perfect pre-
servation of the single grey tone, that Milton, a careful
student of the older poets, owed at least the design of his
"II Penseroso." Scarcely less happy than the lyrics of
Fletcher are those of his coadjutor Beaumont, so far as
the two can be separated. We have noted the tone of
cynicism in Beaumont, which he may have had of Donne,
as where he sings
Never more will I protest
To love a woman but in jest.
On the other hand, in finish, if not in a certain stifiFness,
and occasionally in weight of subject-matter, Beaumont is
no unworthy son of Ben. Such especially is the quality
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 85
of the lines "On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey,"
earliest of a series of poems on this topic and exemplifying
a new note in the lyric, that of melancholy reminiscence
suggested by a monument of past glory. Nor did the
general lyrical facility fail even the later dramatists.
Massinger, Ford, Randolph, and especially Shirley, all
were writers of successful songs and quotable even in a
select anthology of the lyrics of their time.
The masques, which flourished in increasingly expensive
glory throughout the reigns of King James and Charles I,
are full of lyrical poetry; and of this domain Ben Jonson
is the recognized potentate, giving laws with dogmatic
certainty informed, however, with consummate taste and
a true love of poetrj\ Daniel, Campion, Beaumont, Chap-
man, Browne, all were competitors of Jonson in the
masque, and all have left in this work of theirs admirable
specimens of their lyrical art. Unhappily, the very per-
fection of the adaptability of poetry such as this to the
purpose in hand often deprives it of that permanency to
which its merits would otherwise entitle it. Still, it is not
impossible to cull many a poem of indestructible beauty
from among the forgotten glories of these sumptuous
vanities of times gone by. Possibly the most permanent
are the ei)itlialamia or bridal songs, for the masque was
often cnij)loyed to grace the festivities of noble nuj)tials.
Of uj)plied lyrics of this kind (to go back for the nonce),
none are nobler tliaii \ho. famous "Prothalamion" and
"Ki)illialamion" of Spenser, tlir former written for the
joint marriage of two noble ladies, daughters of the Earl
86 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
of Worcester, the latter, the poet's own ecstatic marriage
song. Neither of these formed part of a masque, nor did
Chapman's "Epithalamion Teratos," the effective lyric
which he employed for the celebration of a marriage in his
completion of Marlowe's Hero and Leander. But it was
poems such as these that offered Jonson and the writers
of masques models for their subsequent work. There
are few finer epithalamia than Jonson's which concludes
the masque that Gifford picturesquely dubbed The Hue
and Cry after Cupid, with its sonorous refrain, "Shine,
Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star." The foremost
writer of masques in the time of King Charles was James
Shirley, notable, too, as one of the great dramatists of his
age. The lyrics of Shirley, which are often exquisite and
deeper than surface thought and catching charm, are
confined neither to his dramas nor his masques, but were
collected by their author in a volume, published in 1646,
in which he claims several fugitive poems already in print
and attributed to other men. Despite the confusion of
Shirley's lighter muse with that of Herrick and Carew, his
is the larger utterance of earlier days; and so, to a cer-
tain extent, likewise, is Habington's, who in his sonnet
sequence to Castara, 1634-1640, practised that now old-
fashioned form almost for the last time, until it was re-
vived, first by Charlotte Smith and Bowles in the latter
decades of the eighteenth century, and later with renewed
vigor and poetical success by Rossetti and Mrs. Browning
in Victorian days.
Analogies frequently mislead and disprove what they
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 87
are invoked to illustrate ; and yet the often-repeated com-
parison of the reign of EHzabeth to the spring, the period
of peculiar and rapid quickening, the time of bloom and
promise, is as useful as it is obvious and hackneyed. In
such an age poetry is careless in form and subject as we
have seen, more intent on saying many things than cau-
tious in selection; and the moral significance of art with
questions of its mission are things little thought on, and,
even if considered, carelessly neglected. There was vice
and sin in these old days, and there were serious-minded
men who deplored it; but, although the forces of disin-
tegration were already at work, there was as yet no open
break between the cult of beauty and the spirit of holiness.
With the accession of King James a change came over the
English world. First, the national spirit fell slack, with a
foreigner come to the throne. As a consequence Puritan-
ism, with its dangerous political aspirations, began to
kindle, fanned by the fitful unwisdom of the king and
his preoccupations pedantic and unkingly. The frivolous
became more frivolous with their masques, revels, and
costly entertainments, and royalty led the rout of folly;
while the prudent, grave, and God-fearing felt themselves
gradually alienated from nmch which they had hitherto
been able to accept without question or cavil. The arts,
and particularly the stage, suffered in this cleavage be-
tween the pursuits of i)leasure and the dictates of morals.
But to speak of Puritanism in its more inclusive sense,
as wholly inimical to poetry, is totally to misre[)resent
the truth. The history of the sacred lyric alone, in the
88 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
reign of James and Charles, with its splendid dedication
to the worship and glory of God, whether the devotee
were Anglican, Puritan, or Roman, is enough to disprove
so gross a misrepresentation. This however must be con-
fessed, the poets now chose between earthly and divine
love or lived in later regret for their celebration of the
former. Amor, Venus, and the rest were now felt verily
to be gods of the heathen, to be sung with apologies if not
with shame; and song, like other good gifts of the world,
was enlisted in the services of virtue and godliness.
As a result of this split between the sacred and the
secular world in poetry as elsewhere, the age of King
Charles I produced the purest of our poetical worshippers
of beauty as it produced the most saintly and rhapsodic
of English devotional poets. Among the former Carew
and Herrick stand preeminent, alike in their general
characteristics and in the delicacy and perfection of their
workmanship, but contrasted in many other things.
Thomas Carew is described as an indolent student while
at Oxford, a diplomat of modest success, later promoted
to a close attendance on King Charles as the royal cup-
bearer. He wrote, like a gentleman, for his pleasure and
that of his immediate friends, and his poetry came into
print only after his death and after the passing of the
immediate experiences that occasioned it. Carew was
devoid of Jonson's scholarship as he was devoid of Jon-
son's show of it; but his learning was adequate and, if
worn negligently, was always in the height of the contem-
porary mode. But neither the form nor the thought of
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 89
Carew's lyrics is ever negligent. Here he is strict as Jonson
himself, and far more easy. Carew seldom trespasses
on serious or important subjects, dwelling preferably in
the world of compliment, polite love-making, pointed
repartee, and sentiment only half serious. And yet Carew
is a very genuine poet, full of fancy, unerring in his cor-
rectness of phrase, happy in his choice and management
of stanza, and admirably in command of himself and his
art. His taste for the most part preserved him from the
conceit, whether of Sidney or of Donne. Carew, in a
word, is the ideal poet of Waller's imagination, an ideal
that Waller in his narrower, poetically desiccated, and
less well-bred age, never approached.
Our other English poetical hedonist, Robert Herrick,
is a very different type of man. Born in 1591, several
years before Carew, Herrick probably began writing not
long after the death of Shakespeare. He was one of the
authentic sons of Ben and has left more than one poet-
ical memorial of the brave old days at "the Dog, the Sun,
the Trii)le Tun," where Jonson sat enthroned, the august
potentate of literary Bohemia:
Where we siieli flusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.
Herrick somewliat unfittingly entered the Church and
remained long years Vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire,
of which he was deprived during the Commonweallli, lo
be restored on the accession of King Charles. The i)ub-
90 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
lication of Ilerrick's poetry in a volume called the Hes-
perides was delayed until 1648, when his spirit of joy was
peculiarly out of touch with the turbulent days of the
trial and execution of King Charles. Herrick's volume
seems to have fallen dead from the press despite a minor
part of it on more serious subjects, designated Noble
Numbers ; and his reputation remained obscured to a time
almost within the recollection of the scholarship of to-day.
The lyrical poetry of Herrick — and save for his epigrams,
which in comparison are negligible, he wrote no other —
is of a range far contracted within the ample bounds of
the Elizabethan muse at large. Ever remembering the
minor number of his religious poems, many of them very
beautiful, no English poet is so sensuous, so all but
wholly erotic, and so frank and whole-souled a follower
of hedonism in his philosophy of life, and of Anacreon,
Sappho, and Catullus for his art of poetry. Herrick is a
lover of all the joyful things of the world: the spring with
its blossoms and country mirth, fair women, their youth,
and the charming details of their beauty, its fragility and
imperishable charm. He finds uncommon joy in common,
often in trivial, things: the tie of a ribbon, the flutter of
his mistress's dress, the small pleasures and superstitions
of his coimtry parish, his dog, his maid, the simple pro-
vender of his larder — better furnished, one may surmise,
than the humility of some of his poems confesses; and he
shudders at death as the negation of all that he adores,
lamenting the approach of years with unfeigned regret
for the joys that are past and irrecoverable. Yet Herrick's
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 91
success lies less in all these things — which he shares with
a dozen other poets — than in the vividness and simple
directness with which he has realized them in an art as
sure as it is delicate, as apparently unsophisticated as it
is metrically and stylistically impeccable. Happiness of
imagery rarely lapsing into actual conceit, sly humor,
witchery of phrase, all are Herrick's. In a score of de-
lightful poems — " Corinna Going a-Maying," "To Prim-
roses," "Meadows," "DaflFodils," "His Grange," and
"Thanksgiving" — Herrick has equalled the best of the
Elizabethan lyrists; and, in general, his technique is more
perfect than theirs. As much cannot be said on this score
either of William Cartwright, of whom Jonson said that
he wrote "like a man," or Richard Lovelace, admirable
gentleman that he was in the halls of Oxford, at court,
and in the field. Both are lyrists of great inequality,
Lovelace especially, varying between some two or three
perfect little songs (such as the immortal "To Lucasta,
going to the Wars," and "To Althea, from Prison "), sure
of a place in any anthology including his time, and poems
that fall into mere slovenliness and unintelligibility.
In the poetry of Herrick, and more particularly in that
of Carew and Ix)velaco, to which we may add poems of
Sir Robert Ayton, Cartwright, Bromc, King, Hoskins
and many more, we meet with the earliest considerable
body of verse that comes under the category of vers de
sociele. This variety of the lyric recognizes in the highly
complex conditions of modern .society fitting themes for
poetry, and makes out of the conventions of .social life a
92 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
subject for art. Only the poet who knows this phase of
Hfe from within can truly depict it; not because it is
superior to other life, but because it is broken up into a
greater number of facets, each reflecting its own little
picture. Vers de societe makes demand not only on the
poet's breeding and intimate acquaintance with the
usages and varieties of conduct and carriage which dis-
tinguish his time, it demands also control, ease, elegance
of manner, delicacy of touch, with an entire absence of
pedantry, perfection of technique and finish. As to the
result, exacting criticism has found its cavil and its sneer.
Vers de societe has been found wanting in seriousness as
occupied purely with trifles; and in part this is true. Yet
neither of poetry nor of life is it fair to demand that it
be concerned wholly with
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.
The hyperbole of emotion would fare ill if judged by the
standards of the hyperbole of compliment; and those who
find nothing but shallowness and insincerity in the lyrics
of Carew, are judging these delicately cut little cameos
by standards better applicable to the portraiture of heroes
hewn of granite or cast in bronze. " Breadth of design, "
"sustained effort," "artistic seriousness," all have their
place in the jargon of the critic as measures to apply to
the larger dimensions of heroic and romantic art; but such
standards belong not to the distinguishing of the scents
and colors of roses nor to the appraisement of the gossa-
mer delicacy of many a lyric which is no less sincere
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 93
because it happens to be founded on the superficialities
of social intercourse that conceal very little after all the
mainsprings of true human feeling.
Turning now to the devotional poets of the reign of
King Charles, we reach a group as interesting for their
diversity of faith and opinion as for the singleness with
which they cultivated their dignified and supremely
difficult art. We have heard of the devotional sonneteers,
Breton, Constable, Barnes, and the rest; the translation
of one or more of the psalms of David into verse appears
to have been de rigueur to all who pretended to any
cultivation of poetry, from Surrey and Gascoigne to
Stemhold and Hopkins, and from Queen Elizabeth to
Bacon and King James himself. Among the Elizabethans,
Donne wrote some exquisitely fervent devotional poetry,
Jonson like others a poem or two in the kind; but South-
well alone devoted his muse in toto to the praise and
glory of God. As the Puritan spirit stiffened for its strug-
gle with kingcraft, men of all faiths examined themselves
more rigorously as to their beliefs, and the literatun^ of
faith, accompanied by that of controversy, gained in
vogue and popularity day by day. These were the flour-
ishing times of the religious pamphleteers, many of whom
wrote in verse with pertinacious and exasperating facility.
George Wither, friend and collaborator with William
Browne in the Shcj)hcrd\'i Pipe, 1017, turned from the
pastoral, from satire and lyrical verse (in the last of
which he had approved himself in Fidelia, 1()17, and
in Fair Virtue, 1G22, a genuine poet), to the religious
94 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
pamphlet in verse. In Hymns and Songs of the Church,
Halleluiah, and other Uke productions, he attested his
faciUty in rime and the austere Puritanism of his faith.
To Wither there was a greater mistress than art; but
instead of enhsting art in the service of rehgion, he felt
her ornaments were to be discarded as among the deceitful
appearances that lure men from the straight and narrow
way. Wither's devotional poetry is always didactic. Not
dissimilar in general intent was the even more popular
work of Francis Quarles, who, among many pamphlets
which were little more than paraphrases of scriptural
story, wrote several volumes — Sion's Elegies, Sion's
Sonnets, for example — of devotional lyrics. The most
famous of the books of Quarles is his Emblems, first
printed in 1635, and followed almost up to our own
time by innumerable editions. Quarles, unlike Wither,
remained of the Church of England; and, equally unlike
his Puritan rival, decked out his wit in all the grotesque
originality of conceit. None the less Quarles is as genu-
inely devout as Wither, and these poets and their lesser
kin brought "the consolation and stay" of poetry,
mingled with that of religion, to thousands to whom the
rhapsodic visions of Crashaw must have remained as a
fourth dimension.
Of the many charming devotional poems of Herrick
it is not necessary to speak at length. His is the attitude
of the child, tired of play, who adores and fervidly, he
knows not why. Herrick was doubtless a truly religious
man and honored with unfeigned piety the picturesque
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 95
forms of the Church which he served. Carew, with the
well-bred gentleman's sense of the fitness of things,
declares explicitly,
I press not to the choir, nor dare I greet
The holy place with my unhallowed feet.
Habington devotes the last book of his Castara to the
heavenly Muse; and, save for a poem or two, the fine
religious verse of George Sandys, the traveller, is para-
phrase and not Ij'rical. There remain, if we except Milton,
the three great religious poets of the age, Herbert, Cra-
shaw, and Vaughan, and all were 'par excellence lyrists.
George Herbert was born one of nature's darlings, his
family, — that of the Pembrokes, — his favor, his tal-
ents, and his fortune all conspiring to that end. After
a distinguished career at Cambridge, where he became,
in 1619, Public Orator of the university, Herbert came
into favor at court and enjoyed the friendship of Bacon
and Dr. Donne. While Herbert was at college, Donne
had been his mother's friend, and there can be little
question that it was his example in the church and in
poetry that determined Herbert's ultimate career. Hav-
ing taken holy orders, Herbert became rector of Fuggel-
stone in 1630, dying prematurely three years later. His
was a life pure, beautiful, and saintlike; and his poetry,
liiim})le though he reckoned it, was the flower of his piety
,'irul loving devotion to the animating spirit and the
ceremonies of his beloved Church. His one volume. The
Temple, was published posthumously and enjoyed an
immediate and continued poj)ulurily. Her1)crt is a con-
96 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
cettist, and delights not only in ingenious imagery but
even in the puerilities of acrostics, anagrams, and shaped
verses. But these ingenuities of his wit are the mere
surface foam and bubbles of a tide of deep and irresistible
religious fervor. The sincerity of Herbert's feeling, the
sweetness of his faith, and the frequently high poetic
quality that he reaches, make him one of the truest, as
he is still one of the most widely read, of our devotional
poets.
The poetical relations subsisting between Herbert and
Crashaw are very close, for it was The Temple that begot
alike the spirit and the title of Crashaw's volume of
religious poetry. Steps to the Temple, first printed in 1646.
Richard Crashaw was likewise of Cambridge, and was one
of five fellows of Peterhouse deprived of their fellowships
because they refused to take the oath of the Solemn
League and Covenant, offered almost literally at the
point of the sword. Crashaw soon after went abroad and,
entering the priesthood of the Roman Church, died a
sub-canon of the Basilica Church of Our Lady of Loretto.
Before he left Peterhouse, Crashaw had written some
charming secular verses, printed with his other work
as The Delights of the Muses ; but his enduring fame rests
on his religious poetry. Crashaw, too, is a concettist
and follower of Donne; but where Donne sees things
oddly from the innate originality of his mind and Herbert
dwells with loving ingenuity on every curious detail of
his art, Crashaw is carried away in a storm of imagery,
confused and incoherent at times from the very force of
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 97
his eloquence. The figures of Crashaw are often not only
extravagant but wanting in taste; yet it is easier to find
in him passages of glowing religious emotion, sustained
lyrical art, music of words, and splendor of diction, than
it is to seek out his inequalities and lapses into the ex-
cesses of imaginative conceit wherein he has been time
out of mind the example and warning of the critics. There
is no English poet, until we come to Shelley and Swin-
burne, who is so dithyrambic as Crashaw, and few have
matched the ease and music of his lines and the atmos-
phere of light and radiance that pervades the best of his
poetry.
There is no such close connection between Vaughan
and his predecessors as that between Herbert and Cra-
shaw. Henry Vaughan, called the Silurist by his contem-
poraries because of his birth among the people of South
Wales, entered Oxford in 1G38, five years after the death
of Herbert. Crashaw he could not have known person-
ally, as Crashaw was of Cambridge and deprived of his
fellowship while Vaughan was still an undergraduate at
Oxford. Ikit Vaughan had a glimpse of the former age.
He knew Cartwright and Randolph and revered the
memory of Jonson. These associations influenced him
early to the writing of secular poetry, some of which,
of a grade little above Randolph or Stanley, appeared
as early as 1(546. We do not know the jjarlic-ulars of
Vniif^han's life. Before long he turned his allenlion with
his brother Thomas to religious prose and verse, iiis most
im[)oriant collection, .Sz7cx Scintillans, a|)pearing in 1050
98 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
and 1655. We may imagine Vaughan in his beautiful
home in South Wales, leading a life somewhat that of
Wordsworth in his beloved Lake Country. Indeed, there
seems much in common between the two poets, especially
in their unbookishness, their love of nature in her power
to reveal truth to man, their lofty poetical spirit, in-
equality of execution, and a certain narrowness, the price
of the intensity of each. In Wordsworth this narrowness
took the form of pride and didacticism; in Vaughan it
was merely theological, and the product of his age. And
yet Vaughan, even with this and his halting execution, is
at times a great if unequal poet, and his close observation
of nature and his loving sympathy with all living creatures
presages an age far in advance in these respects of his own.
The accidental discovery of some forgotten manu-
scripts on a street book-stall in 1896, has placed a fourth
poet, equally fervent in his piety if humbler in his attain-
ments, beside the trio, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan.
Thomas Traheme was nearly of an age with Vaughan
and, like him, was partly at least of Welsh blood. Pre-
ceding Vaughan by a year or two at Oxford, Traherne be-
came private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, and by
that circumstance was identified as the author of a modest
amount of devotional prose and verse of much sweetness
and fervency. Traherne's poetry, while warmer tem-
pered than that of Vaughan, seldom attains the glow of
Herbert, far less the flame of Crashaw. Traheme has an
easy facility of phrase and a command over his verse
that is surer than that of Vaughan; and he maintains a
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 99
uniform, if somewhat monotonous, excellence and music
on his one happy string, the interdependence of God
and man, that makes of man, not a corpus vile of cor-
ruption, but "a spring of joy crowned with glory." It is
pleasant to discover among devotional poets strains so
uniformly cheerful as Traherne's, and thus poetically
to recover from Puritan despair, Anglican preciosity
as to form, and the visionary ecstatics of Romanized
Crashaw.
Among the minor lyrists of the latter days of Charles I
may be mentioned Henry King, Bishop of Chichester,
who amused himself with poetry during a long life, and
negligently allowed his work to be much confused with
that of other poets of his day. Thomas Stanley, too,
noted for his History of Philosophy, was also a poet in his
youth, now in the manner of Donne, now in a less dif-
ficult mode. Of Habington and his Castara, sole theme for
his devoted muse, we have already heard, and of Love-
lace, whose fortunes were as unequal as his poetry. Sir
John Suckling, with all his coxcombry and carelessness,
stands above any of these in his poetical gifts and, with
his dramas as well as his lyrical poetry considered, holds
a dignified place in the annals of literature. Suckling
inherited wealth and a high social position and i)lunge(l,
when a mere youth, into the gayest and wildest of lives,
becoming no less famous for his verses and his wit than
for hi.s lavish extravagance, inveterate gaming, and dis-
.soluto life. As a writer of vers de socictc, dciighlful, dar-
ing, and cynical, perfectly well-bred, and at times of the
100 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
highest artistic merit, Suckling, at his best, was unex-
celled in his age. He died, a suicide, before the beginning
of the civil war. Charles Cotton, a man of more equable
spirit, was born in 1630 and lived on long after the Re-
storation, though his lyrics, most of them, belong to his
earlier days. Several things are interesting about Cotton.
He was the personal friend of Isaak Walton and wrote the
well-known continuation of The Complete Angler ; he was
well-versed in French literature, and not only translated
much from it but fell under the immediate influence of
his contemporaries in French poetry. A genuine love of
nature and ability to express in brief and vivid words that
love, are characteristics of Cotton's poetry; and again
and again he reaches excellence in his lyrics of love and
good-fellowship. Not less appreciative of nature, though
in her milder moods, is Andrew Marvell, Assistant Latin
Secretary to Milton in Commonwealth times and re-
doubtable satirist of Charles II and his dissolute court.
The poetry of Marvell belongs to his earlier days, when
he was a tutor in the family of the parliamentary general.
Lord Fairfax. Marvell revived the pastoral lyric with
the unaffectedness and susceptibility to nature's charm
that marked the poetry of Greene or Breton; and he
imbued it with a much more serious thoughtfulness. But
Marvell's love of nature is at closer hand, as shown in
several lyrics, remarkably personal and circumstantial in
detail, and in his few rare devotional poems. Suckling
marks the crown of the conscious artistic lyric, poetry as
the mirror of the sentiment and gallantry, the delicate
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 101
compliment and raillery of the conversation of folk of
the best society. Beginning in the conscious art of Jonson,
this species of the lyric reached its culmination in Carew,
to flourish in a desiccated branch in the poetry of over-
praised Waller. But aside from Herrick and the greater
devotional poets, the ultimate hope of the far future lay
in the naturalness and unaffectedness of poets such as
Cotton and Marvell, in whose sincere and beautiful minor
poems are contained some of the choicest qualities of
English lyrical art.
Allusion has just been made to the over-praised lyrical
poetry of Waller, whose position in the history of English
poetry has been traditionally misunderstood. Edmund
Waller was born in 1605, three years before Milton and
when Shakespeare had as yet eight years to live. He was
the senior of every poet named in the last paragraph
excepting Habington, and was writing poetry before the
repute of Carew, Suckling, or Lovelace. There were three
editions of Waller's poetry in the year 1645, before either
Ilcrrick or Carew had come into print, but the author's
authentic publication of his work belongs to 1664.
Waller was a man of wealth and position, a trimmer in
politics, serving Cromwell or his enemies as opportunity
offered. Waller was likewise a trimmer in poetry. An
actual examination of his earlier poems, before they were
sophisticated into accordance with the style that came
to prevail by 1664, disi)rovcs the glib statement that
Waller's "earliest verses . . . f)ossess the formal char-
acter, the precise prosody without irregularity or over-
102 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
flow, which we find in the ordinary verse of Dryden, Pope,
and Darwin."^ Waller's poetry is resonant with the tones
of other men — Carew and Herrick, in particular, both
well known in manuscript and anthologies before the pub-
lication of their collected works; — and the resonance is
always weaker than the original and always on the more
])opular note. Waller fell in happily with an age that was
wearied with the ingenuities of conceit, and shrinking
from the vigor of an exercise of the imagination to tlie
safer and more comprehensible functions of the fancy.
Waller would have been lost in the age of Elizabeth;
as it was, he was found only when the tide of poetry
had ebbed, save for Milton and Dryden, to the shallows
wherein swarmed the Bromes, Roscommons, and Buck-
inghamshires. Among them Waller was a Triton.
Abraham Cowley was a greater poet and a far more
estimable man. Only three years Waller's senior, Cowley
was in print as a poet at fifteen. Ejected from Cambridge
for his royalist leanings, after a brief stay at Oxford
he entered the services of Queen Henrietta Maria, retir-
ing with her to Paris, on the surrender of King Charles.
There it was that he found his college intimate, Crashaw,
in want, and sent him with a royal introduction to Rome.
Cowley's life was cleanly, religious, and somewhat aus-
tere. He was neglected with many another good man by
King Charles II at the Restoration, but repaid at his
death by a royal bon mot. The range of Cowley's literary
activity in poetry and prose is quite unusual among the
* E. Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature, London, 1889, pp. 2^ 4.
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 103
lyrists of his time. With a name for himself in the drama,
the familiar essay, and in serious and epical poetry, Cow-
ley bulks large, and his collected works, in their many edi-
tions, assume the portentous. In his lyrical poetry Cow-
ley is alike a follower of Jonson and of Donne, though the
constructiveness of the former has less affected his meth-
ods and style than the latter's originality and conceit.
Cowley was possessed of excellent poetical gifts, and he
made by honest endeavor the best possible use of them.
He was emulous of originality of thought and phrase, and
we feel at times that he ingeniously strove for them. He
essayed a multitude of themes and a variety of stanzas;
his mood ranges from serious, religious, or moral thought,
to lighter lyrics of love and humorous mock lyrics: and
he is almost completely successful in each. One of Cow-
ley's chief foUowings of Jonson consists in a number
of lengthy poems on serious subjects which he entitled
"Pindaric Odes." Jonson, who never spoke idly where
the classics were concerned, wrote several poems which
he called Odes, and one especially on the death of Sir
Henry Morison that he entitled "A Pindaric Ode." In
them he preserves to a nicety the formal conditions of
the Greek model. Cowley, although a competent Latin
scholar, as his Latin play Naiifragium Joculare suffi-
ciently attests, was not so happy with his "Pindarics,"
which, in their slovenly disregard of the rules of the form
so flaunted in their titles, had much to do with the abuse
of the term, ode, in later English poetry to signify almost
any poem of a more or less serious intent, written in ir-
104 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
regular metre.' Cowley's Odes, it may be fancied, have
always been more admired than read; they are estimable
productions, but not too often re-readable. Cowley died
in 1667, too soon to acquire the gait and habit of the new
restrictive poetry. His repute was greatest in the thirties
and forties, before the conceit, which he practised with
great ingenuity and success, had fallen into disrepute,
and before the star of Waller had risen, harbinger to that
greater luminary, Dryden. By the time that Pope had
come to write, Cowley was hopelessly out of fashion;
and the age that began a biographical notice of Waller
with the words, "the most celebrated English poet that
England ever produced," asked the cruel question: "Who,
now, reads Cowley ? "
With the death of Kjng Charles and the amazement
and reaction that it bred, the writing and the reading of
poetry flagged as men turned to the sterner political tasks
of the moment. Milton at once threw himself with aban-
don into a struggle which seemed to him vital to the free-
dom of England, and Marvell soon left his seclusion to
war with his pen by Milton's side. As for the Cavalier
poets, those who were not dead or in exile were living,
like the once magnificent Lovelace, in poverty if not in
actual want; caroling boisterous songs in praise of loyalty
and drink, like Cotton and Alexander Brome; or, at the
^ Cowley's age was not insensible to these defects; witness the strict-
ures of Congreve in his excellent Discourse on the Pindarique Ode, 1705.
For a short and rather slight summary of the English ode, see Mr.
Gosse's English Odes, " Introduction," 1889.
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 105
least, abusing their Puritan enemies, like Clieveland, in
satire, ribaldry, and jest. Stanley had turned from poetry
to philosophy; Montrose, "one of the last of the goodly
line of English noblemen whose highly tempered metal
expressed itself unaffectedly in song," survived King
Charles only a year. Save for Vaughan and a few be-
lated collections of verse such as those of King, Stanley,
Sherborne, and the posthumous volumes of Crashaw and
Cartwright, the fifth decade of the century is peculiarly
barren of poetry. But the transition into the new age was
in process in poetry as elsewhere. Waller and Davenant
were already adapting their thoughts with their metres
to changing conditions and, closer to the return of the
king, John Dryden began to write.
In our contemplation of the lyrical poetry of the reigns
of King James and Charles I, with its ingenuity, its tune-
fulness, its religious fervor, its cynicism, and its rich and
varied form, we have left for the last the greatest of its
names; for although Milton partook far more of the na-
ture of his time than is conmionly allowed, he stood aloof
in his art, as in his faith, little touched by the idle tem-
porary fashions in literature that dashed their moment-
ary foam at his feet. Chronologically, there is no mak-
ing Milton an Elizabethan, whatever the reminiscence
or paternity of his j)octry. lie was almost precisely the
contcmi)orary of Waller, who, however, some years sur-
vived him. Ilerrick, nearly twenty years Milton's senior,
died in the same year with him, 1074; C'owlcy, his junior
by ton years, died before him, and for nearly fiflccn years
106 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Milton and Dryden were fellow subjects of Charles II.
The poetical influences upon Milton, however, were
those to which the Elizabethans had been subjected,
working directly upon him as they had worked upon
them, though with the slanting rays of an afternoon sun.
We hear, for example, how deeply and lovingly Milton
read the classics at Cambridge; how he acquired a famil-
iarity with the Italian poets and wrote sonnets of his own
in that beautiful tongue; how he knew and appreciated our
English poets from Chaucer and Spenser to the Fletcher
of The Faithful Shepherdess and the William Browne of
Britannia's Pastorals. We hear, too, how above all Mil-
ton was influenced by the study of the Bible in his liter-
ary as well as his religious spirit, and this to a degree be-
yond that of any English poet that had gone before him.
A notable thing about the inspiration of Milton is its
bookishness. Few poets ever studied the classics so lov-
ingly and so completely; few divines have been so sedu-
lously read in the Bible; his was an extraordinary con-
junction of profane with sacred learning. And yet, though
read in the poets, the philosophers, the makers of great
literature as few poets have ever been read, it must be
confessed that Milton was less well read in the life about
him, though an eager participant, when the time came,
in the political affairs that were shaping the destiny of
England. No man can escape the direct rays of the life
about him unless he sequester himself in monasteries or
live in the gloom of prisons. Yet it is easy for the scholar
and lover of books to see life less by the direct, unbroken
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 107
ray than as its light is refracted by the prismatic lenses
of learning and former poetic art, often thus shivered into
a new beauty indeed, but into a partial beauty after all.
The lyrical poetry of Milton, save for the later sonnets
and the choruses of Samson Agonistes, belongs, as is well
known, to the period before the civil war. Here, free as
yet from the trumpet call to civic duty, he was able to
give the earlier fruits of that reading and study in which
he had fitted himself, like a religious no\T[ce, for the holy
calling of poetry. These early poems of Milton com-
prise, among others, the marvellous "Ode on the Na-
tivity," the exquisite companion lyrics "L' Allegro" and
"II Penseroso," the "mask," as he chose to call it, of
"Comus," and the noble threnody on the death of a dear
friend, "Lycidas." To have achieved poetry so varied in
kind and so perfect in technical finish before the age of
thirty was a marvel not to be repeated in English litera-
ture until the days of Shelley and Keats; and Milton him-
self did not rise, at least lyrically, Jibove these triumphs of
his young maturity. In the matter of immediate influ-
ences, we may discern how the "Ode on the Nativity"
smacks of the " Marinism," fashional>le in the poetic cir-
cles of the poet's day at Cambridge and exemplified in
fantastic beauty and confusion in Crashaw's "Hymn" on
the same great theme. We may note how here and else-
where Spenser was Milton's guiding star, how Burton's
"Anatomy of Melancholy" may have suggested the con-
trast of "L' Allegro" and "II Penseroso," and a song of
John Fletcher's the tone and technique of the latter.
108 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
"Comus," too, is but one in a long and brilliant succes-
sion of sumptuous court entertainments from Jonson to
Carew, and "Lycidas" harks back, once more through
many pastoralists, to Spenser, in whose Arcadian back-
ground linger the honored classical shades of Vergil,
Theocritus, and Moschus. Yet there is ever about the
poetry of Milton a supreme originality that arises out
of a perfect artistic assimilation of the materials of his
art, the imprint that marks the man of simple, great, and
unaffected nature.
Milton is notably a serious poet. To him poetry was
no "vain and amateurish" art, but ever to be cherished
as a precious vocation, less sacred only than his allegiance
to the state and his duty to God. Milton did more than
any of our great poets, save Wordsworth, to reclaim
poetry to a serene and steady contemplation of the weight-
ier themes of life and to wean us from the notion that
lyrical poetry especially is concerned only with the petty
expression of trivial individual emotions. It lias been re-
marked that love is not a theme of Milton's poetry; that,
despite the contrasted titles of "L' Allegro" and " II Pen-
seroso," there is melancholy in his mirth, but no mirth in
his melancholy; that "the topical bias," that is, an inter-
est in affairs current and personal, is one of the inherent
characteristics, if not a defect, of his poetry. All this is
true; but what Milton lacked in diffuseness, in sympathy
with individual men and the complexities of their lives
and feelings, he more than made up in the intensity of his
personality, the energy of his inspiration, and the refine-
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 109
ment of his taste. In "Lycidas" for example, Milton was
practising a funereal art long sanctioned in the lugubrious
elegies of his English predecessors; but with the fantas-
tic wealth of the Renaissance pastorals and the chaster
examples of the classics before him, he raised this spe-
cies of verse to a plane of artistic seriousness that made
"Adonais," "Thyrsis," and "In Memoriam" possible.
So, too, in his incomparable sonnets Milton's attitude is
always dignified, his themes of moment, his execution
finished, restrained yet ample. Those in Italian celebrate
an obscure adventure in no wise discreditable to Milton's
heart, if they be not rather mere poetical exercises in a
beautiful foreign tongue. Except for these, with the son-
net on the nightingale and the cuckoo, neither does love,
the all but universal theme of previous sonneteering, ap-
pear in the sonnets of Milton, nor do they group together
in any unity or singleness of mood. Milton emancipated
the English sonnet from the secjuence, realizing its unity
as of a higher order than that dependent on the accidents
of collocation. Each of his sonnets is the effective pre-
sentation of a single mood, based upon some reality of
person, character, or incident; and it was in the nature of
things that, with this recognition of the essential unity
of the thouglit, Milton should work in consciousness
of those niceties of form that give to the Petrarchan
sonnet its unmatchable position among the verse forms
of lyrical poetry. MilLon practised the sonnet in strict
accord with the sequence of rime which Italian usage
had established. lie was not always so rigid in his ad-
110 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
herence to the subtler Italian refinements as to pause.
But who shall say that such a sonnet as that addressed to
Cromwell or the poet's noble utterance "On his blind-
ness" could be bettered by a transfer of the point of tran-
sition from sestet to octave to a place more regular ac-
cording to exotic standards ?
Indubitably in Milton the poet ever ruled the scholar,
and we must look back to iEschylus and Sophocles for a
poetic calm and elevation, a certainty of technique and
a sustained nobility of thought such as his. However, the
poet controlling the scholar alone will not explain Mil-
ton; for it must be confessed that in contrast with other
poets of the first rank, Milton is not remarkable either
for the fruitfulness or the variety of his reflections. It
has often been observed with wonder that he should have
made so much out of material well known and accepted.
By way of example, Mark Pattison^ once took the famous
sonnet "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints," known
too well to need quotation here, and, showing first that a
familiar quotation from Tertullian is its only thought,
and acknowledging its " diction " to fall " almost below the
ordinary," declared, none the less, that "it would not be
easy to find a sonnet in any language of equal power to
vibrate through all the fibres of feeling." And he finds
the secret of this paradox in the circumstance that "the
poetry of a poem [may be] lodged somewhere else than in
its matter or its thoughts, or its imagery, or its words.
Our heart is here taken," he continues, "by storm, but not
^ Introduction to The Sonnets of John Milton, 1892, pp. 58-60.
UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 111
by these things. The poet hath breathed on us and we
have received his inspiration." The poetry of Milton, in
ultimate analysis, resides in his transcendent personality,
a personalitj^ in which simplicity, intensity, and confidence
in himself and in his di\nne calling unite as they have
never united before. His was a great and fervent soul,
informing a nature so faithful that in his poetry the first
condition is the perfection of artistry. Careless work,
slovenly work, work neither fully thought out nor per-
fected, such as sullied the repute of other poets, was to
IVIilton an impossibility, for poetry was to him a species
of worship and worship was to him an art. Milton's is the
only egotism that the world has accepted without cavil
and without sneer. There is nothing ridiculous in the
assumption of a Titan that he is a Titan. It was INIil ton's
calm avowal that his poetic "gifts" were of "God's im-
parting, . . . which I boast not, but thankfully acknow-
ledge, and fear also lest at my certain account they be
reckoned to me many rather than few." His was the gift
of the ten talents, and he rendered in the measure of their
fullness. This is why "L 'Allegro" and "II Pcnscroso,"
"Lycidas," that splendid threnody devoted to the rites
of friendship, and the lyrics of "Comus" in their pre-
cious setting, never stale of repetition; this is why they
remain, with the sonnets, austere, personal, and occa-
sional though most of them arc, priceless as jewels and as
permanent, to fail us never.
\
CHAPTER V
THE LYRICAL DECLINE; FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE
DEATH OF COWPER
ITH the Restoration of King Charles II to
the throne, indubitably a new spirit came to
prevail in English poetry, and in no form was
U the change so complete as in the lyric. The
new poets sang from the first in the newer strain; the
older poets unlearned their art of singing or, failing so to
do, were carried back into a swift oblivion. Such was the
case with Cowley whose reputation was soon eclipsed by
the greater fame of Dryden. Milton was inadequately
appreciated in his own later time. Herrick, Carew, Suck-
ling, Herbert — to say nothing of the earlier lyrists — all
were speedily forgotten; and Waller, who had continued
to keep his poetical (like his political) cock-boat afloat by
its very lightness in the rapids of Commonwealth times,
now floated out into the calm waters of the new age the
acclaimed leader of the new poetry.
It is customary at this point in the history of English
poetry to dilate on the extravagances of the pre-Restor-
ation poets, to gibbet the conceits of Cowley and Crashaw
and the occasional lapses into bad taste of Cartwright,
Lovelace, and lesser men. Clearly, in view of such condi-
tions, something had to be done; so the temperate Wal-
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 113
ler and the admirable Dryden here step forth consciously
and generously to save English poetry from impending
wreck on the jagged rocks of its own exorbitant imagin-
ation. As a matter of fact, no literature has ever been
wrecked by the exuberance of the poetical imagination,
although poverty of imagination has stranded many a
petty craft on the sand-banks of time. Even the misdi-
rected ingenuity of the conceit — which began with the
first of the Petrarchists, not w^ith Donne, much less with
Crashaw — cannot be held accountable for the change in
literary taste. Passing by the unfairness of a comparison
of the lapses of the concettists and their failures with the
controlled literary style of their successors in the next age,
it may be affirmed that the contrast has been much ex-
aggerated; and it might be easy to find passages in the
poetry of the pre-Restoration poets exhibiting a control, a
sequence of thought, and a moderation not inferior to the
much praised "classicality" that came after. Nor is it
difficult to find conceit, extravagance, and want of taste
in the early work even of Dryden. Among the many
affirmations as to this contrast none is more gratuitous
than that which makes Dryden, or even Waller, a con-
scious leader in the change of poetical taste, or even, in a
very large measure, responsible for it in its alleged foreign
importation.^ The qualities of style and the manner of
tliinking that came, in their fulhiess, to characterize the
literature of the Augustan age, had their origins far back, w
' S<-«- Ihi- prfsint writer's "Ben Jon.son .uid I lie Cla.ssiral School,"
Publicalion* nj the Modem Language Association, xiii, 189H.
114 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
and mainly in England; as to poetry at least, we shall find
them especially (as already suggested) in the precept and
example of Jonson. It can be shown beyond the peradven-
ture of a doubt that Jonson exhibits in his non-dramatic
poetry, so much of it occasional, a trend towards a pre-
cise, pointed, and antithetical diction, a Latinized vocabu-
lary, and a preference for the decasyllabic couplet —
stronghold of the Augustans — over all other kinds of
verse. Dryden, like Jonson, was a playwright, a satir-
ist, a poetical translator, and a critic of high order; and
Davenant, who intervened, in some respects the most im-
portant literary figure between them, affected a similar
catholicity. As to the lyric, it was in the nature of things
that it should suffer in the new age. Already the imagina-
tive power of the best of the Elizabethan lyrists had con-
tracted largely to the play of fancy that characterized the
concettists and writers of vers de societe. Although Jon-
son wrote a poem telling us fancifully "Why I write not
of love," it may be suspected that he felt a certain con-
descension with respect to the whole lyrical art as con-
trasted with his serious work in drama and satire, a
condescension shared by Dryden and others that came
after. Should this attitude among the lyrists of post-
Restoration times be held in question, we have only to
contrast the impassioned eloquence of Sidney's sonnets,
or those even of Spenser, with the polite love-making of
Waller in his effusions to his Saccharissa, to feel the dif-
ference. Therein this pattern of the new polite age dis-
closed to his admiring followers how a fine gentleman
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 115
should court the lady of his poetical choice in verse as
smooth and filed as his sentiments were becoming and un-
sullied by so vulgar a thing as passion. The coxcombry
of some of these verses can be made credible only by
quotation, though seriously to criticise it is, according to
the proverb, to break a butterfly on the wheel.
ThjTsis, a youth of the inspired train,
Fair Saccharissa loved, but loved in vain:
Like Phoebus sung the no less amorous boy;
Like Daphne she, as lovely, and as coy!
With numbers he the flying nymph pursues;
With numbers, such as Phoebus' self might use!
But alas ! the cruel nymph would not for a moment stay,
and after a chase
O'er craggy mountains, and thro' flowery meads,
the lover gives up the pursuit with these consolatory con-
gratulations:
Yet, what he sung in his immortal strain.
Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain:
All, but the nymph who should redress his wrong.
Attend his passion, and approve his song.
Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise.
He catched at love, and filled his arms with bays.
Sir William Davcnant, god-son of Shakespeare, dra-
matist and author of the epic Gondihert, has less of the
lyrical element in him than almost any poet of equal rank.
A few songs, scattered through the plays, echoes at long
range of the brave old age, an occasional poem or two,
rising somewhat at times towards the higher air in which
tlip lyric flf)nrislics — these are absolutely all that there
116 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
are to name of the strenuous first laureate of King Charles.
Great poet, too, that Dryden was, towering tall and un-
ashamed in his vigorous contrasted art even beside the
austere bulk of Milton, his greatest limitations appear
in his lyrical poetry. Three noble and serious "Odes"
he did achieve, the two "for St. Cecilia's Day" and the
splendid lines "to the pious Memory of Mistress Anne
Killigrew, excellent in the two sister arts of poesy and
painting." There are some half dozen lyrics in the plays
adapted to other themes than those of love, a hunting
song, a song of jealousy, a charm and so forth, besides
some more or less perfunctory religious verse to which
the term lyric may indulgently be applied. But, in gen-
eral, by Dryden's time a lyric had come to signify simply
a love-song, now languishing, now disdainful, now com-
placent, now satirical, but a love-song none the less; nay
worse, if passionate, deteriorating into mere animalism ; if
sentimental, a bauble or lure in the frivolous game of gal-
lantry that so occupied the Merry Monarch and his too
loyal and imitative subjects. Thus one of the songs of
Dryden's opera, King Arthur, 1691, begins promisingly:
" Fairest isle, all isles excelling"; but this promise degen-
erates immediately into "swains and nymphs," "Venus"
and "Cyprian groves," and England, we find "shall be
renowned [merely] for love." Of another incidental love
lyric of Dryden's from Cleomenes, 1692, Professor Saints-
bury enthusiastically exclaims: "The song, *No, no, poor
suffering heart,' is in itself a triumphant refutation of
those who deny passion and tenderness in poetry to Dry-
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 117
den; but for a few turns of phrase, the best name of the
Jacobean age might have signed it."^ Thus in the love
lyric Dryden, the first poet of his age, even at his best,
only approached, after all, the best names among the
Jacobeans.
The miscellanies which we found so important in the
earlier age, collecting as they did the best poetry of the
time, continued in popular esteem throughout the seven-
teenth century. One of the most characteristic collec-
tions of the kind is Wifs Recreations, first published in
1641 and going through nearly a dozen editions before the
close of the century. In its various forms this collected
the published poems of Thomas May, Shirley, Herrick,
Waller, Milton, Sir Edward Sherburne, and many other
well-known poets, some of them before they had appeared
elsewhere in print. Other miscellanies ranging between
1G40 and 1G71 are Wit Restored, Wit's Interpreter, Wit and
Drollery, The Loyal Garland, and the popular Musarum
DelicicB. But in quality these and later collections by no
means maintained the earlier standards, but turned from
sentiment and genuine poetry to admit the verse of satire
and wit, the humors of the street and the ribaldry of the
tavern. The earlier fashion of the publication of .song-
books likewise continued almo.st to the end of the cen-
tury, and in the hands of men such as Henry and William
Lawes, Lanirr, Playford, and the great Dr. Purcell, the
music at least suffered no deterioration. Among the.se
' John Dryden a Works, cd. Scott and Salntsbury, Edinburgh,
1882, VIII, 212.
118 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
later poets who may have written exclusively for music,
we know of none, however, approaching Campion. To
return to the miscellany, towards the close of the century
this title was applied to a somewhat different species of
publication; for example, Cowley so entitled a section of
his own poems in the edition of 1656. But far later Dry-
den so designated certain collections of poetry by him-
self and other authors, published apparently under his
supervision. The first miscellany of Dryden, called Mis-
cellany Poems, appeared in 1684 ; the second with the addi-
tional title Sylvce in the next year. The last to which he
himself contributed was the fourth, in 1694, now desig-
nated the Annual Miscellany. This irregular periodical
was by no means confined to lyrical poetry, but con-
tained satire and translation as well. Several poets of
note made their debut in its pages; among them was Pope,
who contributed his pastorals to "the sixth part," 1709.
Returning to the lyrical poets at the Restoration, Shir-
ley, the last of the great Elizabethan brotherhood in the
drama, died of exposure, consequent, it is said, on the burn-
ing of his house in the great London fire of 1666. His
octavo volume of poetry, 1646, was doubtless by this
time as forgotten as his excellent plays. Cowley, who
died in the next year, maintained from his personal re-
pute a longer popularity; but his benign and ornate muse
was out of fashion in these newer days of the return of the
king, son to that queen whom Cowley had so faithfully
served. As to other poets, the old-fashioned cavalier. Cot-
ton, with his unaffected love of nature was nearly as de
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 119
trop as the Puritan belligerent satirists, Wither and Mar-
vell, and in none of these did song continue far into the
new age. An interesting minor poet, who began to write
with Dryden immediately preceding the Restoration, is
Thomas Flatman, better known to his age as a painter
of miniatures. Flatman is a disciple of Cowley, and he
never succeeded in acquiring the mannerisms of the new
age. He thinks for himself, and in some of his irregular
odes — a form that he acquired from his master — has
left behind him some creditable serious poetry. "The
Matchless Orinda," whose folio volume appeared in 1GG7,
three years after her death, belongs here too. Orinda
was in plain life Mistress Kathcrine Philips, born Fowler,
and a native of Cardigan. There she and her husband
formed a little literary coterie, in which the members as-
sumed fanciful names after a fashion prevalent in the ro-
mantic novels of the day. Philips was known as Antenor,
Katherine, as Orinda; the admiration of friends added
the flattering adjective " matchless." Orinda was not un-
known to literary London, and Cowley, Orrery, and Flat-
man approved her. Her poetry, which is fluent rather
than musical or thoughtful, is taken uj) largely with ex-
aggerated [)raises of friendship, and her fame during her
day was greater than her deserts.
And now the world was free to the new poets, the satel-
lites of Dryden: Butler, Oldham, Roscommon, Orrery,
Etheredgc, the satirists, translators, dramatists, and oc-
casional poets of the Restoration — who does not know
their names anrl liow "the glorious John" overtops their
120 .THE ENGLISH LYRIC
mediocrity and what is often less than mediocrity, where
poetry (not mere wit, burlesque, and ribaldry) is the mat-
ter in question. Among these "holiday writers," as Pope
afterwards called them, only Charles Sackville Earl of
Dorset, John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, and, somewhat
later. Sir Charles Sedley, can be described as lyrists of
rank; and they, in a sense, carried onward to a restricted,
though equally choice, development the vers de societe of
Carew and Waller. The lives and dissipations of these
gentlemen of quality are singularly alike and signally re-
presentative of their gay and abandoned age. Dorset
was the eldest, and he longest survived. He is described
by Horace Walpole as "the finest gentleman in the volup-
tuous court of Charles II and in the gloomy one of King
William." His lyrics are found only in collections and
miscellanies. He disdained publication. Dorset's famous
song, "To all you ladies now at land," bears the date
1665. Rochester, who died at thirty-two, a ruined de-
bauchee, left behind him, besides the most exquisite lyrics
of his school, printed verses, the ribaldry and brutality
of which remain unexampled in any literature or age. As
to Sedley, he was a more prudent, a less ungenerous, if
not a less profligate man. Bishop Burnet thus distin-
guished Sedley from his fellows : " He was not so correct
as Lord Dorset nor so sparkling as Lord Rochester."
Sedley appears to have become somewhat less frivolous
at the Revolution. He took sides against his masters, the
Stuarts, whether from any political conviction or from a
private grudge is a matter into which we need not here
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 121
inquire. The lyrical poetry of this group, with John
SheflBeld Duke of Buckinghamshire, Sir George Etheredge,
the dramatist. Mistress Aphara Behn, Lansdowne and
some others, is purely that of amorous gallantry; its very
mask and domino of names — Cliloris, Celia, Dorinda,
Phyllis, and the rest — proclaim it such; as does its vocab-
ulary of hyperbole, its "charms" and "darts," its "pas-
sions" and its "flames." Even the honesty of its cyni-
cism is to be mistrusted, and the whole imaginary world
that it created is only a flimsy and would-be polite fabric
reared on a basis of mere animalism. And yet the best
lyrics of these poets abound in wit, happiness of phrase,
delicacy of fancy, and charm of manner, rising occasion-
ally to passionate lyrical eloquence:
Thou art my life — if thou but turn away.
My life's a thousand deaths. Thou art my way —
Without thee, love, I travel not but stray.
These are the words of Rochester, the most fervid stanza
of a poem, " To his Mistress," that breathes passion from
beginning to end. More in accord with the average excel-
lence of this group of lyrists are these stanzas of Sedley:
'T is cruel to prolong a pain;
And to defer a joy.
Believe me, gentle Celemene,
Offends the winged boy.
An hundre<l thousand oaths your fears
Perhaps would not remove;
And, if I fiii7.('(\ a tlioiisand years,
I could uo decjxT love.
12^ THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Even its lesser members reach excellence. Aphara Behn,
that interesting earliest example in our literature of a
woman earning her living by writing, has left at least one
song of enduring beauty, "Love in fantastic triumph sat " ;
other songs of hers are scarcely inferior. Considering
what was to come after, lyrically, it is not too much to
agree with Professor Saintsbury, that the poetry of this
coterie of Dryden's contemporaries is "memorable as the
last echoes of the marvellous song concert of the first half
of the century. After the death of Dryden and of Sedley,
in 1700 and 1701, a hundred years passed without any-
thing like them."
There was more serious if less lyrically effective poetry
in the age of Dryden; though most of it must be sought for
deep in the works of forgotten poets or found, rescued, as
some of it has been, in treasuries of minor poetry such as
those of Dodsley or Churton Collins.^ Thus Bishop Henry
King, who survived the Restoration nine years, amused
himself with poetry throughout a long life and wrote
unequally, if always at ease, on subjects serious and triv-
ial. Much abused Richard Flecknoe, too, victim with
absolutely unlyrical Shadwell of Dryden's deadly satire,
has been found lyrically quotable by the late Mr. Collins
in two thoughtful little poems. In the forgotten Odes of
John Oldham, chiefly remembered for his satires on the
Jesuits, will be found a dignity of bearing not unworthy
^ Dodsley, A Collection of Poetry in six volumes by several hands, 1758;
Collins, A Treasury oj Minor British Poetry, 1896; Caroline Poets, ed.
Saintsbury, 1910.
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 123
of his master, Cowley; and the difBcult style of John
Norris of Bemerton conceals at times, in the mysticism
of its Platonic and religious ponderings, things of the es-
sence of poetry. It is pleasant to thmk of excellent Sir
Thomas Browne, writing verses as a "dormitive I take
to bedward," the easy manner and placid wisdom of
which will not so affect his readers. Lastly, for amends
to Waller, whose long life closed in 16S7, only a little more
than a decade before that of Dryden, let us recall the
noblest of his poems, the reputed last lines that he wrote:
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er ;
So, calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting tilings, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed.
Lets in new light through chinks that time hatli made;
Stronger ijy weakness, wiser men Ijccome,
\s they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view.
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
In the years of transition from the rule of Dryden
to the rule of Pope, two poets of genuine lyrical quality
appeared. These were Prior and Congreve. William (^-on-
grove in a way continued the lyric of gallantry, as under-
stood and written by Rochester and Sedley, but willi a
more controlled and epigrammatic grace. Congreve is
best remembered for his brilliant comedies of mariners,
sobrilli;nit indeed and ablaze with wit that tbey misre-
124 THE ENGLISH LYllIC
present, in this respect at least, the life which they were in-
tended to portray. Wit is likewise the inspiring quality of
the small number of short lyrical or epigrammatic pieces
that Congreve has left us. This wit is daring, even mechante
at times, but every stroke tells, and every stroke is within
the rules of the game; for "the splendid Congreve," the
Beau Brummel of his day, is ever polished to the nail.
Matthew Prior, though he too wrote lyrics in the approved
manner of the same school, broadened the scope of vers de
societe in subject-matter and by the infusion into it of a
species of bonhomie, sentiment, and humor conspicuously
at variance with the prevalent aridity of the age of wit
and reason. Prior was a good scholar and an accomplished
man of the world. He had risen, in the diplomatic service,
to the post of ambassador to France, and appears to have
been deeply involved in the intrigues that sought to restore
the Stuarts to the English throne on the death of Queen
Anne. His poems, published in 1709, include much quasi-
satirical and occasional verse which need not concern us;
for Prior is not memorable for his dull Pindaric welcome
to William of Orange or for his modernization (and spoiling
in the process) of the admirable old ballad of "The Nut
Brown Maid." Prior's title to fame rests on less portent-
ous matters. It may be a parody on Boileau's pompous
and complacent "Ode on the taking of Namour," it may
be in lines of mock gallantry and the tenderest of senti-
ment to a "child of quality," or in verses whimsically
conceived for his own monument, — in all we have the
easy humanity, keen insight under a frivolity of manner.
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 125
kindliness of spirit and quickness of apprehension that
belong to the man of the world, expressed with a simplicity
and gay charm of manner that is inimitable and unap-
proached. His version of Hadrian's famous lines "To his
Soul" has more than its dainty wit to recommend it; it
marks the height at times attainable in this charming
species of the lyrical art, one in which only Praed, Lan-
dor, Dobson, and a few others were to equal their master.
Prior.
Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing.
Must we no longer live together ?
And dost thou prune thy trembling wing.
To take thy flight thou know'st not whither ?
Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly
Lie all neglected, all forgot:
And pensive, wavering, melancholy.
Thou drcad'st and hop'st thou know'st not what.
It is noteworthy in Prior that he preferred for his lighter
pieces measures which departed as widely as possible from
the tyranny of the rimed couplet. He dared to use the
anapestic trimeter with an ease and skill not equalled by
Dryden, whom he followed in this respect; and, even in
the conventional lyric of love, "Cloe and Euphelia,"
"Cloe, how blubbered is that pretty face," or "The Ques-
tion to Llzette," contrived to do the old thing in a charm-
ing new way.
And now we reach the famous age of Queen Anne, the
ascendancy of Pope and the confirmed rule f)f the heroic
couplet, the metrical enemy of lyricism. It is amazing
126 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
how small a figure Pope cuts when the question concerns
the lyric. The spirit of song was as foreign to him as the
grotto at Twickenham, with its "decorations of sparkling
shells and minerals," was foreign to nature. And yet to
judge Pope for the absence of a quality, the negation of
which made him in some respects the man and the author
that he was, would be as unfair as the satisfied pronounce-
ment of the romanticists which denies to Pope any place
within the domains of Parnassus. In the fair house of
poetry are many mansions and, however remote from the
soul of lyricism may be the artificiality, the rhetoric, the
specific application, and the antithetical balance of this
great artificer in wit. Pope has his place even among poets,
if not among lyrists, for his delicate fancy, for his occa-
sional insight, and for his power of crystallizing thought in
admirable metrical form. In deference to all this, the
anthologies of lyrical poetry reprint Pope's epigram "On
a certain Lady at Court," his "Elegy to the Memory of
an Unfortunate Lady," and the least unlyrical of all his
poetry, "The Dying Christian to his Soul," Hadrian's
*'Animula vagula, hlandula " once more, already better
done by Prior:
Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame.
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
O the pain and bliss of dying!
Surely only the sanction of a great name and other less
questionable achievement could justify the inclusion of
these mediocre rhetorical lines in any category lyrical.
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 127
Somewhat better are the much quoted verses, "Happy
the man whose wish and care." But the patent masquer-
ading of the last stanza, "Thus let me live unseen, un-
known," from the lips of the vainest of English poets
and the most effectively self -advertised, forever deprives
"The Contented Man " of any place among genuine lyrics.
Admirable master of extended occasional verse that
Pope was, he was not successful in vers de societe ; he was
too satirical and splenetic, too little master of himself
or in control of the venom of his tongue. Mr. Locker-
Lampson in his famous collection, Lyra Elegantiarum,
quotes some lines of Pope "To Mrs. Martha Blount [the
woman that he loved] sent on her Birth-Day," and others
"To Thomas Southerne" on a similar occasion. The first
reads like a formal toast, tempered with obvious religious
sentiment; tlie latter is not much more than foolery. The
most hopeless thing in all this eighteenth-century pro-
priety of mien and precision is its complacence, its uncon-
sciousness of anything beyond or above. Even its humor
it took au serieux, obsessed with the belief that with the
death of the then King George, wit, poetry, criticism, and
the arts must perish off the earth.
With such examples of tlie lyrical art, what could lesser
men do? It may be affirmed with confidence that there is
not a lyrical note discoverable among the Popeans as a
school that does not as materially lessen the rank of its
singer as a follower of ]*opc as it materially raises him in
our estimation as a true poet. Those who look Pope as
their only guide in [)()elry and metrics rose no higher than
128 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
to places in Tonson, Dodsley, and other similar collec-
tions, unless, like Addison and Swift, to them poetry was
merely a diversion. Addison's well-known hymn, "The
spacious firmament on high," deserves a dignified respect;
as to Swift, while the curt verdict of his kinsman, Dryden,
"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," is not to be con-
tradicted, there is, none the less, a playful fancy and a real
tenderness in many of the verses included in The Journal
to Stella (where, be it remembered, the real Swift dis-
closed himself) unpublished and undivulged until time
had laid away both of these unhappy lovers in the grave.
Stella, say, what evil tongue
Reports you are no longer young;
That Time sits with his scythe to mow
Where erst sat Cupid with his bow;
That half your locks are turned to grey?
I '11 ne'er believe a word they say.
'T is true, but let it not be known.
My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown;
For Nature, always in the right,
To your decay adapts my sight;
And wrinkles undistinguish'd pass.
For I'm ashamed to use a glass;
And till I see them with these eyes.
Whoever says you have them, lies.
Among those who wore their Pope with a difference was
Henry Carey, who lives for one piece, a ballad-like lyric in
happy lover's prattle, "Sally in our Alley," a poem alto-
gether natural and charming. Here, too, belongs amiable
John Gay, who could do anything cleverly, if he was only
set to do it and was not overtaken by his incurable indol-
'W
THE LYRIC-VL DECLINE 129
ence in the process. It was Gay that was set upon Am-
brose Philips by Pope because Philips had the impertin-
ence to write pastorals at a time when Pope was engaged
in the same occupation. The result was The Shepherd's
Week, a parody of the degenerate pastoralists of the day,
characterized by much freshness of spirit. The mock-
heroics of Trivia, the Art of WalJcing the Streets of London,
the pleasing Fables and the prodigiously successful Beg-
gars' Opera, all are illustrations of the same trait. The
songs of the last and of Polly, Gay's other "opera," are
trivial; but other lyrics of Gay — among them *"T was
when the seas were roaring," "O ruddier than a cherry"
from Acts and Galatea (which Handel set to music), the
"Song to Phillida," and "Black-eyed Susan," — live in
anthologies of our English song for their musical quality
and their easy verse. And yet, as compared with the genu-
ine lyric of earlier and later times, could anything be more
preposterous and untrue to nature than this last much
lauded song? This impossible young woman, "black-eyed
Susan," comes aboard a ship, exclaiming in the manner of
modern "musical comedy,"
O! where shall I my true love find ?
Tell me, yc jovial sailors, tell me true.
If my sweet William sails among the crew ?
Whereupon William, who is "high upon the yard" which
is "rocked with the billows to and fro" notwithstanding
that the ship is still at anchor in the Downs, "sighed and
cast his eyes below," following immedialcly himself. In
the dialogue that follows, William gallantly asks permis-
130 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
sion to "kiss off that falling tear," compares Susan's eyes
to diamonds and her skin to ivory. This production,
which Palgrave at some nodding moment included in
his Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics, con-
cludes:
The boatsman gave the dreadful word.
The sails their swelling bosoms spread.
No longer must she stay aboard;
They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head.
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land;
Adieu! she cried, and waved her lily hand.
Here the lyric expires in rhetoric, improbable narrative,
and perverted realism.
Thomas Parnell, an older man than Pope, was born in
Dublin in 1679, and only swung late into the latter 's
powerful orbit. Some of Parnell 's Songs (such, for instance,
as the one beginning "When thy Beauty appears ") pre-
serve a freedom of metrical cadence and phrasing quite
unusual in his time. His "Night Piece on Death" has
been praised for its "nature-painting," and his "Hymn
to Contentment," for its freedom in the employment of
trochaic substitutions in an iambic measure, similar to the
same so effectively used by Milton. Even more marked
than Parnell's departures from current poetical conven-
tions were those of Edward Young, also an older man
than Pope and actually a predecessor of Pope's in that
special form of satire which Pope made his own. But
there is little that is lyrical in Young's famous Night
Thoughts, with its strain of elegiac and rhetorical moral-
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 131
izlng in admirable blank verse, and its air of theatrical
gloom, which however effectively tragic in its age, begets
in ours a wholesome and alleviating spirit of levity. It was
Wordsworth that excepted "The Nocturnal Reverie" of
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, from his universal
denunciation of English poetry from Paradise Lost to
Thomson's Seasons as not containing "a single new image
of external nature." This famous deliverance is an exag-
geration, to be sure, but an exaggeration founded on the
recognition of a general truth. Lady Winchilsea, who died
in 1720, some sixty years of age, began under the prevail-
ing poetic influence of her youth, that of Cowley; but her
taste and the circumstances of her life turned her to nature
rather than to books for her imagery; and, while the lyr-
ical spirit is in no wise peculiarly hers, the freshness and
naturalness of her ideas and illustrations is veritably an
clement noticeable in the reaction soon to set in towards a
more salutary conception of poetry.
Critics have been prone to take the flourishing of the ^
sonnet as a criterion of the presence in our English lit-
erary history of the qualities that mark the soul of poetry.
Certain it is that the sonnet burst into a blossoming
springtime with Shakespeare, sensibly declined, as in
summer, under Elizabeth's successors, and, prolonging its
late bloom into a glorious autumn with Milton, came to
the silence of winter from Commonwealth times to nearly
a centurj' later. Mr. Gosseonce noted that Wilh'am Walsh,
who died in 1708, "is the author of the only sonnet writ-
ten in English between Milton's, in 1058, and Warton's,
132 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
in 1750." ^ And this is substantially true if we except two
sonnets of Benjamin Stillingfleet (1G35-1699), culled for
one of the sonnet anthologies and probably written much
about the time of that of Walsh. ^ With Gray and Thomas
Warton the sonnet revived. It was suitable to the medi-
tative spirit of Cowper, and it is a matter of wonder that
he did not employ it more frequently. With Elegiac
Sonnets, 1784, by Charlotte Smith, and Fourteen Sonnets,
five years later, by William Lisle Bowles, the custom of
sonnets written in sequence also revived. Both of these
sonneteers deserve the modest place that they still hold
in anthologies, and it is not an accident that Bowles
should have been the champion of "natural poetry" and
the assailant of Pope in later years with Campbell and
Byron as his opponents. The two or three sonnets of
Burns that may be added to the slender number written
in the eighteenth century, possess the discreet and tem-
pered graces that mark the sober English Burns as con-
trasted with the Scottish lyrist drunk with the madness of
his native song.^ It may be remarked that Burns, though
he caught the idea of the included rime, failed to note or
at least to observe the stricter rules of the sonnet. As the
sonnets of Bowles are in precisely the same form, it may
be assumed that Burns was practising what to him was a
new and polite English art, not essaying the revival of an
1 Ward's English Poets, in, p. 7.
* S. WaddingtoD, English Honneti by Poets of the Past, 1888, pp. 52, 53.
' See "On Hearing a Thrush vSing," 1793, and "On the Death of
Robert Riddle," 1794.
THE LYEICAL DECLINE 133
instrument of poetic expression hallowed by the usages
of the past.
To go back to the more general reaction that set the
current of English poetry slowly in motion on its return-
ing flood, we must turn to James Thomson, the true
coryphffius of the movement with his Seasons, written in
blank verse, and his Castle of Indolence in Spenserian
stanza. The Scottish birth of Thomson and his coming up
to London only after his poetical tastes had been formed,
removed him measurably from the weight and authority
of the urban school of Pope. With that almost infallible
power of observation which was his, an innate love of the
country and of our older poetry, especially Spenser's, it
is not to be wondered that Thomson, whose poetry was
enormously popular in his day, set up a kind of imperium
in imperio and exercised a wholesome influence on public
taste in this attitude of protest against the urban school.
And yet as we read Thomson to-day, with a becoming
salute to " Rule, Britannia! " how fully he seems to us to
share the virtuous attitudinizing, the moral platitudes,
and the artificial rhetorical devices which were tlie ac-
cepted 7)octi(al canons of his age. Among the poets that
group immediately with Thomson, Dyer with his Gron-
gar Hill is contained well within the superficies of The
Seasons, as Blair with his funereal Grave, is comprised
within the ampler limits of Young's Night Thoughts.
Shcnstone imitates the Spenserian manner in his School-
mistress as Thomson really did a little after him. Indeed
Shenstonc compasses some poetry which, however scnti-
134 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
mental and artificial, occasionally approaches the lyrical.
He is not unmusical or wholly repetitious in thought. As
to the rest lyrically, including Thomson, the least said is
the soonest mended. The spirit of song and the poetic
subjective sincerity was no more in them than in the verse
of Pope, Swift, or Addison, although the want seems less a
drying up of the poetic life-springs than their diffusion
and dilution into something of another kind.
With Collins and Gray, whose work was printed, almost
all of it, within the decade of 1740 to 1750, the lyrical
spirit revives, for both have left poetry which claims for
itself a place above that which we accord to those who
merely illustrate their time. Collins's life was short and it
ended in insanity; but his reputation as a poet was made
long before that malign catastrophe and rests almost
wholly on his Odes, most of them addressed to abstrac-
tions such as Peace, Fear, Pity, Mercy, and the like. If
Thomson took Spenser for his model and inspiration,
Collins chose Milton, the Milton of "L' Allegro" and
" Comus." Nor docs he fall far short of his example in the
limpid clarity of his diction, the chaste restraint of his
figures, his fondness for abstractions personified and for
the music of classical proper names. The "Dirge for
Cymbeline," "The Ode to Simplicity," "The Ode to
Evening" and several more belong in the category of
great English poetry; for, even with inequality and a
certain preciosity somewhat difficult to endure for those
who have gone through romanticism and beyond, Collins
would have been a notable poet in any age, perhaps a
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 135
hundred years earlier, a verj' great one. And what is said
here of Collins is measurably true of Gray, whose restraint,
fastidiousness, and impatience of anything but perfection
have left him the author of few, but of very choice poems
in the kind of thing that he set out to do. The universality
of poems such as the famous "Elegy written in a Coun-
try Churchyard," which has usurped to itself the designa-
tion of a whole class of poems, the equally wide appeal of
the "Ode on the Prospect of Eton," these are things to be
reckoned with even if, like Charles Lamb, with respect to
the soliloquy "To be or not to be," we have long since lost
any power to discern, unaided by their repute, whether
they contain poetry good, bad, or indifferent. It was
Matthew Arnold's idea that Gray was larger than his
work, that he was one who might have done poetically
almost anything, but that "be never spoke out." ^ Could
a man so scholarly, so academic, a man who so paused at
sentiment, as he paltered at the picturesque in nature,
ever have readied the passion that is within or the pas-
sion for things without? Nothing could be more admir-
able than the poetry of Gray — witness the great Pin-
daric odes, "The Bard " and "The Progress of Poesy" —
sentiment, style, versification, all is sincere, brilliant at
times, and absolutely finished. Some of the phrases we
cannot help getting by heart: "Youth on the prow and
Pleasure at the helm," "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of
I)ower," "Contenii)lation's sober eye," "the rosy bosomed
Hours," and many more: we have always heard thcra
* Essays in Criticism, Second Series, ed. 1900, p. 09.
136 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
quoted and always heard them praised. Yet we are un-
satisfied and a little impatient and, like the discontented
Athenian citizen, would like to cast a black ballot for
this impeccable Aristides, if we dared. As to the lesser
men, Gray's contemporaries, Byrom, Savage, Armstrong,
Mason, Falconer, the laureate Whitehead, the Wartons,
and Churchill, where in their dreary wastes as spread by
Dodsley, do we find one lyric flower not of paper and
tinsel? In the Odes of Akenside (best in his "Hymn to the
Naiads"), there is an approach to lyrical expression at
times not far short of Collins when not quite at his best;
in " The Minstrel" of Beattie, there is a modest yearning
after "the Gothic," as the mild approaches to romanti-
cism in the latter eighteenth century were called. The
hymns of Watts, and more especially those of John and
Charles Wesley, deserve the respect that honest devo-
tional effort (even when versified) should properly inspire;
and in view of what followed, the interest in old poetry,
especially balladry, which now revived in the publica-
tions of Allan Ramsay, in Percy and his Reliques, 1765,
with Thomas Warton's excellent History of English
Poetry, 1774, came to react before long on the lyric as
well as on other poetry. And yet verily our sympathy
can not but go out to Dr. Johnson who frankly abided, in
the verses he wrote, by the Musa pedestris of Pope, and
to Goldsmith who did nearly the same, but for a certain
elegiac and moralizing deviation, exemplified in the "De-
serted Village," which he caught of Thomson and justi-
fied by doing better in his own way.
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 137
When the romanticist reverts to the eighteenth century
— or what is more likely animadverts upon it — he can
discover only two poets, Christopher Smart and Thomas
Chatterton; the rest, save of course for Blake, are ana-
thema. Smart, otherwise no more than a literary hack
who latterly went mad, is memorable for one lyric of gen-
uine fervor, the "Song of David." There are no verses
so nearly dithyrambic from Crashaw to Shelley, account
for them how we may, with the critics, as the genius of
madness, or with Mr. Symons, as the madness of genius.
Here are two stanzas from this remarkable poem:
Strong is the lion — like a coal
His eyeball, — like a bastion's mole
His cliest against the foes:
Strong the gier-eagle on his sail;
Strong against tide th' enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.
But stronger still, in earth and air.
And in IIk; sea, the man of prayer.
And far beneath tlie tide:
And in the seat to faith jussignM.
Where ask is have, where seek is find.
Where knoek is open wide.
Surely these are strange outbursts for the sage and pro-
per times of Gray, Collins, and Dr. Johnson. Scarcely
less alien is Chatterton, that "marvellous boy," who took
his own life at eighteen, imknowing that his portion was
to be fame for his own achievement and a position most
important as affecting the future. Tliero was a brief con-
troversy, it will bo rrnienibercd, about the time of the
138 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
poet's death, 1770, as to the authenticity of the poetry of
a fifteenth -century poet named "Thomas Rowley" whom
Chatterton pretended that he had discovered in the
muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. But the
sources of Chatterton's Middle English, the processes of
its manufacture, as of his inspiration, have long since
been discovered, and everything is now explained except
how the unlettered boy came by his rare anticipatory ro-
mantic genius. Chatterton's success is strangelj^ depend-
ent on his own archaized and invented vocabulary, and
Professor Skeat, however valuable his scholarly labors, has
not improved the poet in Chatterton by his philological
restorations.^ Chatterton's may have been, to a large
degree after all, the precocious promise of youth which is
not always fulfilled. And yet how charming lyrically is
yElla's "Dirge," for example, and with what simple mate-
rial is it all accomplished. With Chatterton music returns
to the English lyric, and with music that quality of atmos-
phere, as it has been called, in which the romantic appeal
so largely subsists. Whether a mature Chatterton could
have withstood the correctness of Gray and the example
of Cowper it is idle to inquire.
In the estimate of such a poet as William Cowper, it is
well to remember that he was born in 1731, while Pope
had yet several years to live, and that Cowper 's own
poetical activity, confined almost to the decade of the
eighties, stretched only a few years beyond the confident
rule of that most confident of literary potentates, Dr.
1 Skeat, ed. of Chatterton, 1891.
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 139
Johnson. In Cowper, therefore, there was much of the
old: the Popean ideals of correctness and to some extent
even the Popean versification, the precision and pre-
meditated elegance of the diction of Gray, and a Thom-
sonian objective touch with nature — not much more.
Cowper's retired and uneventful life, enforced by his
congenital foe, melancholia, kept his poetry tethered to
familiar subjects; but while he descends at times to tri-
vialities, the strength and genuineness of his feeling, an-
ticipating the Wordsworthian doctrine, often dignifies
his matter so as to lift it into the sphere of poetry. In
"My Marj%" in the lines "On the receipt of my Mother's
Picture," though elegiac rather than lyrical, in the fine
sonnet to Mary Unwin, and elsewhere, Cowper makes
clear his claim to his place among the great English poets;
and this claim rests, above all other things, it would ap-
pear, on a sincere human sentiment, as universal as it is
true and delicate, wedded to an unaffected poetical style
that again and again reaches the simplicity of greatness.
With this in mind, we may accept "The Task" and even
the "Olncy Hymns," though we need not read them; and
we may accept, too, the pleasantries of the critics with
the designation of CowTier as "a Pope in worsted stock-
ings uncommonly thick," remembering, too, that "he
stood at the cross-roads with his face towards the heights
of Wordsworth."
With George Crabbe and his pcxruHar and very effect-
ive "criticism of life," whatever his place in the footway
leading to romanticism, we have nothing to do; Crabbe's
140 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
tongue was not that of the lyrist. With WiUiam Blake,
however, we are not only on the very threshold of the
"bright pavilions" and the "charmed magic casements"
of the romanticists, but we have to reckon with one whose
earlier medium of expression is possibly more purely and
undividedly lyrical than that of any other English poet.
The first thing to remember about Blake is the chrono-
logy that takes him back into the alien past. Born in
1757, two years before Burns, Blake had printed his vol-
ume of Poetical Sketches in 1783, a year before the death
of Dr. Johnson, More than this, the poet informs us that
these poems were written between his twelfth and his
twentieth year, that is between 1768 and 1777, and hence,
some of them, while Gray and Goldsmith were yet active
and before the poems of Chatterton had been printed.
The Songs of Innocence appeared in 1789, the Songs of
Experience in 1794, three years before Lyrical Ballads.
Thenceforward Blake departed from the lyric and chose
the direct symbolism of his Prophetic Books as his mode
of poetical expression. We may therefore say that the
lyrical, that is the cogent and coherent Blake, whatever
his later affinities, belongs wholly in point of time to the
eighteenth century. It has been said that Blake would
have been "a liberty boy" in the days of the Pharaohs,
and he would assuredly have sought expression in the
kindred arts, painting, poetry, and music, no matter
what that negligible part of his existence, his human sur-
roundings. And yet even Blake was not without those
literary influences that start, if they do not determine.
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 141
the course and growth of genius. Mr. Symons notes the
influence upon him of Ossian which appeared in 1765.
The Ossianic manner is more noticeable in Blake's later
work than in the lyrics. And the critic notes, too, the
touch of Blake with Chatterton and Elizabethan song.
"My silks and fine array" is pure Elizabethan and an
exquisite song that neither Jonson nor Fletcher at his
best need have disdained. But these things, with some
slighter more immediate points of contact with conven-
tional features of prevalent poetic style, are the least part
of Blake, who was as little affected by his surroundings
poetical as he was by the opinions and the manners of the
people he knew. Mr. Symons in a notable passage tells
how Blake differs in his lyricism practically from all other
poets. How he sings not of love, but of forgiveness, not
of beauty except to unmask her "soft deceit and idleness,"
not of the brotherhood of men, but of the cruelty, the
jealousy, the terror that, alas, are human. "Ecstasy in
nature" is not Blake's, and he regarded even Wordsworth
as "a kind of atheist, who mistook the changing signs
of vegetable nature for the unchanging realities of the
imagination." In short, "the poetry of Blake is a poetry
of the mind, abstract in substance, concrete in form, its
passion is the passion of the imagination, its emotion is
the emotion of thought, its beauty is the beauty of the
idea."i
' A. Symons, The Romantic Movement in Engllsli Poetry, 1009,
pp. 42, 4;j, cl pcuirim. See also the same author's oxcollent iStudij of
Blake, 1907, and William Blake, by B. de Selincourt, London, 1009.
142 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Farewell, green fields and happy grove
Where flocks have took delight:
WTiere Iambs have nibbled, silent move
The feet of angels bright.
They look in every thoughtless nest
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast
To keep them from all harm.
Nothing could be more impersonal. There is in all this,
as in Blake's utter disregard of human figures in his
poetry, a certain likeness to the abstractedness of Donne
from the forms of the world and from all theu- physical
manifestations. But the likeness ends in the material.
We feel of Donne that he has passed by reading and con-
tact with men through the world, and finding it vanity,
has turned his face away to the larger verities of the mind.
Donne's wisdom is the wisdom of speculation and experi-
ence; Blake's the innocence of childhood, and much of
his charm is dependent on this worldlessncss, if we may
so term it. Indeed, Blake is quite impervious to contam-
ination by actualities or facts; to him the idea is more
truly the reality than to any other English writer, and it
is not wonderful that he should have so wandered from
that concreteness and condensity (in which lyrical success
so largely subsists), into the broken music and the flashes
of vision of his later mystical, incoherent, and yet remark-
able Prophetic Books.
This aloofness from other men and the poetry of other
men, these flights into beatific vision and rhapsodic
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 143
oracular expression, are precisely the qualities most
remote from the genius of Robert Burns, greatest con-
temporary of Blake, most absolute and sovereign lyrist
of the entire eighteenth century. For the richest gift of
Burns, next to his incomparable gift of song, is his human-
ity, the finely attuned sympathy that put him into intim-
ate touch not only with nature but with every genuine
human emotion. Though born a cotter's son and educated
almost literally at the tail of a plough, Robert Burns was
no ordinary peasant; indeed, it may be doubted if the
word peasantry ever rightly described the Scottish tiller
of the soil, at least since the days of the Reformation:
and the Burnses intellectually were above their class.
In Scotland, unlike England, there has existed for cent-
uries a traditional poetry, at times crystalHzed in the
written word, more frequently a flotsam on the tide of
popular memory-, tossed hither and thither, and his who
can make it artistically his own. Not to go so far back as
James Watson's Choice Collection of Scotti.'ih Poems, 170G-
1711, the TotteVs Miscellany, as it has been called, of
Scotland, it was this tradition that was maintained, for
example, by Allan Ramsay and his literary circle, into
whose Tea-Tahle Miscellany, 1724, went songs of the
Ilamiltons of Gilbcrtfield and of Hangour, of Cra^vford
of Dnimsoy, Mallet and Lady Grizel Baillic, as his earlier
collection of Scots Songs, 1719, preserved with somewhat
less literary sophistication earlier minstrelsy of a similar
kind. A later grouj) of lyrists, more nortlicrn and scat-
tered gcograi)hically, iufiliidcd George Ilalket, a Jacobite
lU THE ENGLISH LYRIC
schoolmaster, Alexander Ross, described as "a stickit
minister . . . contented and tuneful on twenty pounds
a year," Alexander Geddes of Morayshire, a Roman
Catholic priest, and John Skinner, a persecuted Episcopal
minister of Aberdeenshire. Burns especially admired the
verve and spirit of the songs of Skinner and owed much to
him on his own confession. As in the old Elizabethan
time, this gift of song was no respecter of persons, and here
in Scotland it was shared by laird and ploughman, by
men and women alike. Jean Adams, who wrote "There's
nae luck about the house," ended an unhappy life in an
almshouse; Isobel or Tibbie Pagan, author of "Ca' the
yowes to the knowes," was a cottager of Ayrshire, de-
scribed as deformed, dissolute, and as formidable for her
tongue as attractive for her powers of song. On the other
hand. Lady Anne Lindsay, daughter of the Earl of
Balcarres, was reputed the author of " Auld Robin Gray";
and the names of Harry Erskine, later Earl of Rosslyn,
for his patriotic "The Garb of Old Gaul," and of Sir John
Clerk, a Baron of the Exchequer, like those of many
another laird and gentleman, figure among those who
contributed either songs of their own or old songs re-
fashioned to the Scottish lyrical stream of the day. Among
many other names may be mentioned that of Dr. Austin,
fashionable physician of Edinburgh, Alexander Wilson,
ornithologist, the aeronaut, "Balloon Tytler," original
editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the schoolmasters,
Blacklock and Hewitt, Skirving, a farmer of wealth,
Lowe, like Burns a gardener's son, IMayne, a compositor,
THE LYRICAL DECLINE 145
and John Logan, the eloquent minister of Leith. It was
in such a Hterature of song, preceding and surrounding
him, that Burns was reared and grew insensibly from a
partaker in its treasures into a mastery of it as his own
inherited possession. Burns, acting naturally and dar-
ingly on the accepted processes of former Scottish poetry,
took his own wherever he found it with a confidence and
a justification unparalleled save in the not altogether dis-
similar case of Shakespeare's own lyrics. This is particu-
larly true of the relations of Burns to Robert Fergusson,
the precocious and unhappy young Edinburgh poet who
died in a mad-house in 1774, when only twenty -four years
of age. Burns erected a monument to the memory of
Fergusson, and never ceased to admire him and to ac-
knowledge his poetical indebtedness to him. Burns thus
becomes in Scotland the crown of a long series of influ-
ences and the artistic form-giver of many an old song
which his genius in transformation has made his own.
For this reason the poet is constantly less successful when
literary influences rather than those of tradition move him,
or those dependent on his exquisite sensibilities or his
own admirable powers of observation.
To return to the life of the poet, it has been in fashion
not so long since to expatiate on Burns the country roue
and carousing exciseman; and a fellow poet, alas, has
made it his l)usincss tf) make tiie most of these delin-
quencies.' Were the discussion of these matters needful,
much might be said on the character of the age of Burns
' Sec Henley, Burns, Life, Genius, Achievement, 1808.
146 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
somewhat to mitigate the inevitable harshness of any
verdict against him, and more were we willing to ply
cm- own contemporary vagary that seeks to justify the
destruction sometimes wrought in the path of genius by
the theory of "the overman." But why should we pass
on aberrations of conduct which Burns shared with hun-
dreds of his weak fellow-mortals who were not possessed
of a tithe of his genius? The experiences of Burns with
the lasses of Ayrshire indubitably heightened the glow of
passion in many a fine lyric; and it was the good cheer
that he loved that cost the poet his life. As a matter of
fact, neither the conduct of Burns (which was often far
from admirable), nor his politics, nor his other opinions
need in any serious wise concern us. It is the poet, —
here, of the many sides of that poet, his compelling power
over words and phrases, his minute and vivid sense of
reality in detail, his mastery of the weapons of scorn and
indignation, — it is specifically the lyrist that interests us
and holds our admiring attention. And as a lyrist Burns
is supreme. Poignancy and sincerity of passion, music
swift and infinitely varied, the rule of a sure artistic taste,
and that unerring certainty of touch in which we recog-
nize how inferior is the thought of the wisest man, if he
be not a poet, to the instant flash of the poet's intuition —
all these things in their perfection are qualities of the
lyrical poetry of Burns. And he was as happy in the
possession of them all as he was fortunate in having,
by virtue of his birth, a medium for the expression of
his poetry, unliackneyed by the daily barter of literary
THE LTOICAL DECLINE 147
usage, and a mastery over verse and stanza that con-
stantly wrought new wonders out of material trite and
old. Burns reached a clarity and simplicity of diction in
the lyric unmatched by any one before his time save
Shakespeare; and he also attained to that choicest gift
of the greatest poets, the power to give to elemental and
universal ideas a form of crystalline and lasting beauty.
From our point of view of the lyric, none of the lesser
poets of the last of the century need hold us, whatever
his individual claim on the high seas of general poetry.
The inspiration of Burns begot a lesser inspiration in
several lesser poets: Joanna Baillie, with her Fugitive
Verses, 1790, more memorable for her few songs than for
her portentous Plays of the Passions ; and Lady Nairne,
altiiough her poetry, with that of Hogg and Tannahill,
comes rather later, with the influences of the romantic
outburst likewise upon them. Erasmus Darwin, with his
Botanic Garden, last and most preposterously logical of the
followers of Pope; William Hayley, puzzled friend and
benefactor of Blake, as wretched a poet as he appears to
have been an estimable man; Samuel Rogers, who aimed
in his Pleasures of Memory, as in his later pleasing versi-
fied guide book, Italy, no higher than prose and reached
no higher: in none of these is there the slightest suspi-
cion of the lyric. And still less could we expect to find
song in the Rolliads, the Baviads, and Mccviads, in which,
as in the earlier Diaholiads, contemporary small satirists
in forgotten dijifrilx's chid lesser men than themselves.
Hannah More, "llir most powerful vcrsificatrix in the
148 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
language" as Dr. Johnson called her, yields little that is
lyrical; and the verses of Mrs. Mary Robinson, the Prince
of Wales's "Perdita," who styled herself "the English
Sappho," yield, of their kind, too much. Another poetess,
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, in a long life of literary diligence,
reached deserved repute for a single beautiful poem, be-
ginning, "Life! we've been long together" ; though that,
too, came later. With Blake, Chatterton, and Burns in
mind, and likewise with the respectable unlyrical people
noticed above, it might almost be said that the lyric by
1795 had fallen into the hands of women and children,
ploughmen and mad folk. But the day was at hand,
and the lyric was shortly to come to its own. In this very
year, 1795, Walter Savage Landor issued the first of his
volumes of poetry; in the next, Coleridge appeared for the
first time as an author in company with Charles Lamb;
while 1798 is the ever memorable year of the publication
by Wordsworth and Coleridge of Lyrical Ballads. But
all of this belongs to the next chapter.
CHAPTER VI
THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL
HERE are words that are like palm-worn
coins; we believe them to be precious metal,
but we know neither their sometime weight
nor to what sovereigns they once owed alle-
giance: they have become mere counters. Such a word
is "romanticism," with some half dozen like, — classical,
psychological, renaissance movement, — and they de-
serve no less than banishment from our lips and from our
books, could we know how to get on without them. As
to romanticism, which is our concern, to attempt a new
definition here would be mere pedantry; to assume that
the term is likely to mean sufficiently nearly the same
thing to any two minds to make exact a joint conclusion,
would be an assumj)tion hazardous at the least. And yet
obviously there is a difference between the trim and defi-
nite urban world of Pope, between nature as excellently
described by Tiiomsoii, or man set nakedly forth by
Crabbe and the transfigured world of Wordsworth, Cole-
ridge, Keats, and Shelley; and somewhere within the
broad and undefined suix'rficies that marks the difi'erence,
the element in literature, as in art, railed romanticism,
finds iLs place. A well-known critic has called this change
*' the renaissance of wonder," and indubitably wonder at
150 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the strange, the inexplicable, a sense of the unattainable
beyond our philosophical, as beyond our artistic reach,
is a striking component in the make-up of our early nine-
teenth-century romantic poetry.^ But this is not all; the
greatest poets do not leave us in puzzled and dissatisfied
perplexity, nor can the art that aims at it knows not
what, reached it knows not how, charm much beyond
the period of its novelty. Dubiety, approximation, and
incompleteness are no more qualities to be sought in art
than in science; the suggestiveness, the sense of something
seen from a new angle, the depth, beyond, so to speak,
which is of the very essence of romantic art, may be com-
passed in many other ways than by stirring the sense
of the marvellous. When all has been said, perhaps the
artists' word "atmosphere," long ago used by Coleridge,
most nearly expresses this quality of depth, the real crite-
rion of romantic art; certainly no poem, piece of fiction,
or picture that is without the something that we designate
"atmosphere," can be considered romantic. And we have
come to set such store on this matter of shadow and light
that we are wont, some of us hastily, to deny poetry, art,
grace, existence, to anything else.
The influences that make for a change in taste seldom
come singly or as the result of some one revolutionary
figure. If the nineties of the eighteenth century marked
^ Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Of
course, this allusion by no means disposes of this admirable phrase or
calls into any question the fine critical discernment discoverable in this
justly famous essay.
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 151
the culmination of Pope in Erasmus Darwin, the popular-
ity of CowTJer continued in Rogers's pedestrian Pleas-
ures of Memory, with the Sonnets of Bowles "written
amidst various interesting scenes, during a tour under
youthful dejection," as one of their accepted novelties.
They saw, too, not only much of the poetry of Blake and
Burns, but three little volumes in which Wordsworth fig-
ured, — Lyrical Ballads among them, — Coleridge's Poems
on Various Subjects, and first volumes of Southey, Lamb,
Landor, and Ebenezer Eliot. In almost all there is de-
parture from the things poetical that had been, and much
of their newness is of a nature lyrical. In that famous
walk of Coleridge and the Wordsworths in the Quantocks,
the summer of 17'J(j, when Lyrical Ballads was discussed
and with it the principles of the new poetry, Coleridge
reported his agreement with his friend on "the two car-
dinal points of i)oetry — the power of exciting the sym-
pathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth
of nature, and the power of gaining the interest of novelty
by the modifying colors of the imagination." It was these
two "powers" that the two authors exercised, each in his
contribution to their joint early effort — for to Lyrical
Ballads, "We are Seven" and "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner" both were contributed. It will be recalled by
all readers of poetry how Wordsworth, after a brief ex-
perience with the world in London and in momentary
touch with the French Revolution, retired to his native
Luke Country to cultivate i)oetry with a devotion and a
constancy absolutely unparalleled; and how in contrast,
U2 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Coleridge tried preaching, journalism, lecturing, and Ger-
man metaphysics abroad, only to lose his exquisite gift
of poetry in the thirsty sands of theological and philo-
sophical speculation, in which, however, his intuitive
grasp of truth, the weight of his thought and its suggest-
iveness, leave him, despite many projects deferred and
unfinished, the master critic of his time.
Wordsworth wrote poetry for more than fifty years;
yet almost all his enduring work was comprised in the
decade that opened with the publication of Lyrical
Ballads and closed with Poems in Two Volumes, 1807.
This statement is particularly true of the lyrical poetry
with which we are alone concerned. For with all his
description, narrative, and moralizing, the new thing that
Wordsworth brought to English poetry, the memorable
thing, was his power to take emotions, actually roused
and stimulated by simple scenes and incidents, and, pass-
ing them through a calm and meditative artistic process,
transmute them into that higher and more significant
product that we call poetry. This process is par excellence
lyrical. The lyrical poetry of Wordsworth is of many
kinds and expressed in a variety of our simple English
metres, handled always with masterly directness and self-
control. Some of it is personal in the older sense in which
the master passion of love has always been the inspiration
of the poet; far more was suggested to him by scenes,
either within his own experience among his beloved lakes
and hills, or by incidents of his various tours abroad or
in the British Isles. Some of the many, many sonnets —
THE RO^L\NTIC RE^^VAL 153
reduced by rigorous exclusion by Matthew Arnold to
sLxty memorable ones — are historical or called up by
contemporary political events. The best of these, as per-
haps of the lyrics in other forms, are those that touch
nature in her power to reach, through the interpretation
of poetry, the significance of minor and commonly uncon-
sidered things; and like the rest of the author's poetry,
all have passed through the medium of the poet's personal
experience and cogitation. It has been said that Words-
worth drew little from the acquisitions of other men ; that
he started life with no such stock in trade of generally
accepted ideas as most of us possess, for the most part un-
conscious that we possess them. To such a mind every-
thing that it observes comes in the light of an actual
discovery; hence the poet's descent, at times, into mere
trivialities, — we may believe that none of them were such
to him, — and his strange inability to distinguish the ex-
cellent among his own poems from the moralizing medi-
ocrity that characterizes so much of the Wordsworthian
low countries.
The ruminating subjectivity of Wordsworth is by no
means easy to understand. Like most men who live
much to themselves and think deeply, Wordsworth was
peculiarly self-centred and in a certain sense narrow.
But when he .sought expression for his personality in his
art, he found it, not like Byron, in laying bare what we
may call the physical autobiography of his soul to an
astonished world, or in a Kcatsian absorption in the
worship of beauty as a cult, but in the elcvatiou of his own
154 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
musings from the plain of observation and meditation
to the sphere of poetry, in which the thing once merely
personal to the poet comes to have a new and universal
significance. The Prelude, which is Wordsworth's spiritual
autobiography of soul, and many of the lyrics, illustrate
this quality: "The Solitary Reaper," "The Highland
Girl," even the poems " to Lucy." Take, for example, the
often quoted
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees.
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay.
In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills.
And dances with the daffodils.
Here as in so many of his poems it is not the subject, but
its transformation on the anvil of poetic thought that
gives it its beauty and permanence. Wordsworth extended
the lyric to a wider range of personal-impersonal feelings.
THE ROMANTIC REVWAL 155
shall we call them, than it had known before, unfolding
to us the joy there is in the unregarded things, when once
seen in the "light that never was, on sea or land." In-
deed, to Wordsworth poetrj^ was not alone "the spon-
taneous overflow of powerful feeling"; to the making of it
went, likewise, according to his own theory, subsequent
"recollection in tranquiUity." It may be said that it is
this leisurely pondering and shaping of poetic material
in a mind never hurried, never perturbed, never weary
with its own processes, if not always uniformly successful
in the result, that distinguishes Wordsworth among Eng-
lish poets. It is in poems such as the sonnet "On West-
minster Bridge," and the scarcely less beautiful "Evening
on Calais Beach," in "The world is too much with us,"
the immortal "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"
the "Ode to Duty," and a score of lovely lyrics, "The
Green Linnet," "To a Cuckoo," and some more, that
Wordsworth is at his best. In the rare union that he
reached in such poems of "deep feeling with profound
thought," and with a style, at its best, restrained almost
to a Greek purity, this greatest of the romantic poets
attained to heights beyond which, with all the imitation
that he inspired, our English lyrical poetry has not yet
soared.
If Wordsworth moves us poetically with "thoughts
too deep for tears," the contrasted appeal of CoKTJdgo is
addrossed more directly to tlu; senses; and his is that inex-
[)li(al)le charm tliat comes willi the power of magic. It
has been said lliat "Kubla Khan" is an iiifallibh* touch-
\56 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
stone of lyrical appreciation as it is likewise of lyrica)
quality, by comparison, in other poems. Indubitably the
lyrical taste of him who can not recognize the warmth of
color, the pomp and music of sound, the weird intensity
of feeling, involved in this remarkable fragment of a fan-
tastic dream poetized, may well be deaf to lyrical quality
in other modes; but to dignify "Kubla Khan" to any
such position would be much the same as to make some
one of the exquisite, cobweb incoherences of Debussy
musically the touchstone of lyrical spirit in Beethoven,
Chopin, or Schumann. The touch of magic which is
Coleridge's, notably of course in "Christabel," is assur-
edly an exquisite gift and the beginning of a new note
which deeply afTected the poetry of the century. Seldom
has a poet so successfully essayed new melodies by re-
aflSrming, however unconsciously (as Coleridge did in
"Christabel"), the metrical freedom which has ever been
the birthright of English verse. Quite as rarely, too, has
incompleteness lent a charm, unequalled even by the sus-
tained artistic logic by means of which Coleridge's other
masterpiece in the supernatural, " The Rime of the An-
cient Mariner," reaches its unqualified success. But magic
in Coleridge is not merely dependent on the supernatural.
Take these exquisite lines from "Youth and Age":
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'T is known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit —
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd —
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 157
What strange disguise hast now put on.
To make believe that thou art gone ?
I see these locks in silvery slips.
This drooping gait, this alter'd size:
But springtide blossoms on thy lips.
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.
What other English poet employs such witchery of phrase
on so e very-day, so universal a topic? And yet very little
of Coleridge's poetry is really personal; everywhere we
find him exercising the function of the philosopher in
generalizing emotion until it becomes typical and there-
fore artistic. In one of the profound pieces of critical in-
sight which characterize that fascinating autobiography,
the Biographia Literaria, Coleridge declares that one of
the first criteria of genius is the power to exercise the
poetic art on subject-matter remote from the personal
experiences of the poet; for only thus can the passion de-
lineated be truly disinterested and so reach the typical.^
This Coleridge again and again succeeds in doing, creat-
ing for us as a result a veritable atmosphere of light and
color in the medium of which his ideas became in the
highest .sense of the word romantic.
From these heights of the romanticism of the spirit
and from Wordsworthian revelation we must now de-
.scend to the picturesqucness and admirable sclectiveness
that mark the poetical narratives of Sir Walter Scott; and
possibly the best way to make this descent is by w.'iy of
' Chapter xv. Works nf Coleridge, Amerimn cd. 188t, lit, 376.
158 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
James Hogg, Scott's fellow-countryman, the "Ettrick
Shepherd." Hogg was born in 1770, the same year with
Wordsworth; though Wordsworth survived Hogg, who
died in 1835, no less than fifteen years. Hogg was no more
than a herd-boy, but he acquired at his mother's knee
much of that rich folk-lore of the Scottish peasantry which
we have already found at once the inspiration and the
quarry of Burns. Hogg was twenty years old before he
had mastered what Carlyle calls "the mystery of alpha-
betic letters"; but at twenty-six he had begun to write
verses, and his earliest songs were printed in 1800. Hogg
has been described as a poet, "wholly destitute of pas-
sion," but he could write a stirring battle song such as
"Lock the door, Lariston," and there is lilt and music in
some of his songs ("When the kye comes hame" or "My
love is but a lassie yet") that would not discredit Burns
himself. In "Kilmeny," the quality of which is lyric
despite its narrative form, Hogg attained, unmistakably
for once, romantic magic. There is an unearthly glamour
about the stolen maiden, allowed to revisit her earthly
home by her captors in the land of faery, that thrills almost
as Coleridge can thrill us. And among the innumerable
lyrics that the skylark has inspired in English poets, few
are so charming as Hogg's, beginning :
Bird of the wilderness,
BIythesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place —
O to abide in the desert with thee!
THE RO^L\NTIC REVIVAL 159
It used to be the fashion to praise Sir Walter Scott for
the versatility with which he turned from success in
poetry to success in prose, from the ■^Titing of romantic
narrative in verse to the writing of romantic narrative in
prose. There was obviously no versatility here; for, de-
spite all the charm and motion of the longer poems of
Scott, they remain largely pure narrative and lift more
rarely into the higher regions of poetry than any verse
of their merit in the language. From the possession in
it almost alone among the songs of Scott of the much
vaunted touch of magic by which the romanticists set
such store, the song from The Heart of Midlothian begin-
ning " Proud Malsie is in the wood" has been called Scott's
only lyric. But there are other poems that deserve the
title: the pretty lullaby "Now, bless thee, my baby,"
patriotic lyrics such as "King Charles" and "Bonnie
Dundee," and the lively hunting song with its charming
refrain, "Waken, lords and ladies gay," assuredly among
them. Scott was so splendid a piece of manhood, with
honesty, courtesy, and chivalry so written in large upon
his life, that it irks one to find anything wanting in his
ample nature. Yet he was possessed precisely of those
qualities that are most frequently mistaken in their glitter,
facility, and success for poetry. Scott has hardly any in-
siglit into nature beyond those features and situations
that arc obviously picturesque, and no storms of i)assion
or de])tli.s of inward pondering express themselves lyric-
ally in all his voluminous writings. It would be a mistake
to attril)nfc this, liowover, to insensil>ility or to the lack
ICO THE ENGLISH LYRIC
of a strong and finely tempered personality. Great lit-
erary man that he was, Scott was simply not lyrically
vocal; and we feel, as we read his occasional lyrical suc-
cesses, that they are after all exceptional.
Scott touched life at first hand, even if tradition, the
archaeologist and the collector of curios in him, did inter-
fere at times to destroy the contact. Robert Southey,
who was surer in his own heart, with his Thalabas and his
Kehamas, of poetical immortality than possibly any other
English poet laureate, seems to have reached mankind
and the world only through the intervention of books;
and accordingly he has left just one poem quotable even
approximately as a lyric, the "Stanzas written in his
Library." The estimable virtues of Southey, of which his
friends and the critics have made so much, no more con-
cern us than his unreadable epics. Precisely the contrary
is true of Charles Lamb; for Lamb in his habitual expres-
sion of self, so natural and so charming, is always more
than half a lyrist, although he has left in bulk little that
is clothed in the customary raiment of poetry. Lamb's
earliest poetry, entitled Blank Verse and written with
Charles Lloyd, belongs in publication to the year 1798.
Proportionate to its amount, the poetry of Lamb furnishes
much to the anthologies, all of it original and of worth.
Like Southey, Lamb, too, lived in books, but with how
different a result. Lamb's contribution to the romanti-
cism of his time was his discovery of the Elizabethans and
the joyous and discerning acclamation that he gave them.
He is more than half a poet of an elder age himself. A
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 161
favorite lyrical metre of Lamb's, for example, is the octo-
syllabic, managed much after the manner of Wither. Lamb
employs it in his exquisite "metaphysical" bit of moral-
izing "On an infant dying as soon as born," and again,
linked in threes, as Carew was wont to use it, in the beau-
tiful lines "In my own Album." Lamb, too, could raise
personal emotion to the height of lyrical impersonality,
and we know not whether " When Maidens such as Hester
die," written of one to whom the poet had never even
spoken, reminds us more, in its circumstances, of Donne
and his unseen, unknown Mistress Drury, or of Words-
worth and his "Highland Girl." There is a choiceness of
flavor in a love poem such as this, rarefied like the ether
above the heats and clouds of earthly passion, and as per-
fect in expression, too, as in mood. Only once has Lamb
surpassed this lyric, and that is in "The Old Familiar
Faces," daring metrical experiment though it is, and one
that the poet did not repeat. If a poem is to be judged by
its success and not by preconceptions, "The Old Familiar
Faces" must be accepted without extenuation or excuse.
No flow of orthodoxly regulated syllables could produce
the complete cfT(>ct of these broken words, ordered in the
slow movement of despairing revery.
I have had playmates, I have had companions.
In my diiys of childhood, in my joyful school-days —
All, all arc Kono, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing.
Drinking lair, silling laic, with my bosom cronies — ■
All, all arc gone, llic old f.miili.ir faces.
162 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
How some they have died, and some they have left me.
And some are taken from me; all are departed —
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Such a tour de force is never to be classed with the met-
rical nihilism of a Whitman ; but as a daring Turneresque
triumph by means of the employment of an untried med-
ium in a case not to be won by the assent of orthodoxy.
Walter Savage Landor, though five years the junior of
Wordsworth, published poetry almost as early and formed
for himself ideals in literature as independent. Moreover
Landor's was a style more purely his own than that of
any poet of his time. His achievements in letters were
manifold : prose, drama, the epic, the lyric, and, above all,
the epigram. In all, too, he attained excellence, though
popularity has never waited on him. Landor's literary
pose throughout his long life was that of aloofness, he
literally "strove with none," and he succeeded in keeping
himself singularly free from the Gothic romanticism that
permeated Scott and the rest of the narrative poets and
from the naturalism of the Wordsworthians as well. The
classical training of Landor was extraordinary and his
facility in Latin verse such that he frequently wrote his
poems in both languages, preferably translating into Eng-
lish from the Latin in which he had first clothed his
thoughts. Indeed, in his restrained and studied beauty of
thought, Landor was more artistically conscious, whether
in verse or in prose, than any other English author of
rank easily to be named; and in consequence there is
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 163
an epigrammatic flavor rather than a lyrical about the
greater number of his shorter poems. Even his deservedly
most popular lyric, "Rose Aylmer," possesses this char-
acteristic. In a word, Landor is less completely a lyrist
than one of the most consummate writers of vers de societe
in the language. Many of his poems in this kind are of
extreme brevity, four lines, at most eight or ten, but
finished to the last syllable. Such is the famous epitaph,
"I strove with none for none was worth my strife," the
hardly less perfect, "Ah! do not drive off grief," or this:
How many voices gaily sing,
"O happy morn, O happy spring
Of life!" Meanwhile there comes o'er me
A softer voice from memory.
And says, " If loves and hopes have flown
With years, think too what griefs are gone! "
Surely none will deny that such poetry has in it more than
the quality of mere epigram; the unity, the single tone,
the grace of perfect execution, the deeper feeling be-
neath — all these are qualities of the lyric. A longer
specimen of this union of lyrical and epigrammatic art is
the following:
In Clementina's artless mien
Liicilla asks me what I see.
And are the roses of sixteen
Enough for me ?
Lucilla asks if that l>e all,
Have I not cuU'd as sweet before:
Ah yes, Lvifilla! and their fall
I still deplore.
164 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
I now behold another scene.
Where pleasure beams with Heaven's own light.
More pure, more constant, more serene.
And not less bright.
Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose.
Whose chain of flowers no force can sever.
And Modesty who, when she goes.
Is gone forever.
Is it over-subtle to observe that the last stanza performs
the double function of completing the description of the
maiden and informing the poet's enquirer why such as
she are not preferred to "the roses of sixteen"? Landor
wrote greater things than his lyrics; but some of us gladly
recur to them for their finish, their taste and reserve, and
for that fine salt of wit that may yet preserve them beyond
the term of our contemporary predilection for "nature,"
"atmosphere," and the other indefinable things that we
spend so much of our critical time in defining.
Almost within the decade in which the copyright of
Lyrical Ballads was appraised, on the settlement of the
publisher's business, as of no assignable value, and not
long before De Quincey could boast, with an approxima-
tion to the truth, that he was the only reader of Landor 's
Gebir, Thomas Campbell reached popularity at twenty-
one with his Pleasures of Hope, 1799, which has been
happily described as the last gasp of the poetry of the
eighteenth century. By 1809, when his Gertrude of
Wyoming was published with equal success, he had con-
formed his style to the romantic narrative that Scott had
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 165
brought into vogue. Campbell was a versatile man, pos-
sessed of little originality, but clever in seizing upon pic-
turesque and pleasing commonplaces and treating them
with a certain readiness and with a sentiment not ungrace-
ful. As to his lyrics, several of them — "Ye Mariners of
England," "The Battle of the Baltic," above all, "Hohen-
linden" — caught and retained the popular ear; and the
last, for its genuine fire and spirit, deserves its reputation.
The sentimentality of Campbell is more difficult for us to
accept than his somewhat cheap, if eloquent, patriotism;
the former was more acceptable to the age that wept over
Mrs. Radcliffe's novels and required the satire of Gilford to
recover it from the inanities of Delia Crusca. Below the
level of memorable poetry the age abounded in tuneful
song, that caught the taste of the moment and appeared in
song-book and album. Charles Dibdin, who died at almost
seventy in 1814, left behind him six hundred songs of the
sea and on other subjects, all of them easy, singable,
most of them robust, many of them vulgar. There is, too,
a certain "go" in the now forgotten lyrics of Thomas
Dcrmody, some of them written as far back at least as
1790, and the later ones collected posthumously into the
Uarj) of Erin, 1S()7.
In the lyrics oi Thomas Moore, so famous in his day,
we meet with the very beau ideal of immediate and
happy contemporary success. Moore gained his repu-
tation with Odes from Anacreon, ISOO, which is both
less and more than a translation, and in his revival,
at least in respectable form, of the old song-books,
166 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Irish Melodies with Music, 1807, and nine other edi-
tions up to 1834. Moore has been perfectly described by
Mr. Syraons as "the Irishman as the EngHshman imag-
ines him to be," "he represents a part of the Irish tem-
perament; but not the part which makes for poetry." ^
Indeed, no two things could be wider at variance than a
genuine lyrical inspiration, such, for example, as that of
Burns, with the traditions of three centuries of national
song behind him, and the drawing-room prettiness and
sentimentality of the words that Moore — polite, viva-
cious gentleman of the tinsel society of the regency —
devised to fit his Irish Melodies. Moore wrote wholly to
please, and some of his "melodies" are pleasing, their
phrases gracefully and prettily turned, their sentiments
such as all give assent to, and creditable to their author.
It was cruel of Mr. Symons to submit Moore to a contrast
with his fellow-countryman, Mr. Yeats; no paper blossom,
though bright as cochineal or aniline dye can make it, can
stand comparison with nature. Although his work came
somewhat later with English Songs, collected in 1832,
Barry Cornwall, as Bryan Waller Procter was poetically
known to his age, belongs here, not too far removed from
Moore and Dibdin. Procter seems to have been one of
the most lovable of men; from Lamb and Landor to Swin-
burne (for Procter ended a long life in 1872), men united
to praise him. He appears to have united two character-
istics not usually found in the same author, — a tendency
to take the color of his own work from the models about
' Romantic Movement, p. 200.
THE ROMANTIC RE\T\^AL 167
him and an ability, notwithstanding, to suggest to others
what he was unable to accomplish himself. As to the
lyrics of Procter, they deal with the obvious obviously
and, possessed of a certain singing quality, carry their
light burden agreeably, alike to the ear and to the under-
standing. Less important are the verses for music of
Thomas Haynes Bayley and the imitative lyrics of Allan
Cunningham, now echoing Burns, now Dibdin, and reach-
ing very little in very much matter. With the nonsense in
song of Coleman, O'Keefe, and Theodore Hook we sink
below the lyric, as in the delicious humor of John Hook-
ham Frere, the delightful parodies of James and Horace
Smith, and the biting wit of George Canning we go over to
the alien domain of satire.
It is astonishing how slight was the influence of Words-
worth on the poets of his own generation. We might
mention Ebenezer Elliott's early nature poetry in this
connection, did not the date of The Vernal Walk, 1798,
withstand us. Elliott was to find his niche with his Corn-
Law Rhymes much later, and after all there is always in
liim more of Crabbc, invigorated with indignation and
vociferous eloquence, than of Wordsworth. The poetry of
Caroline Bowles Southcy discloses the tender sympathy
with man and nature that distinguishes Wordsworth and
reaches excellence at times. The sentimentality that
Mrs. Southcy escaped, however, beset most of the other
women of her age who wrote poetry: Felicia Dorothea
Hemans, melodious and sincere; Mary Ilowitt, who at-
tempted the weird and fanciful, sometimes nearly attain-
168 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
ing success ; diffuse and voluble Letitia Elizabeth (Landon)
Maclean, known and beloved by the album readers of
her age as "L. E. L."; Sara Coleridge, who so filially per-
formed the duties that devolved upon her as her father's
literary executor, and inherited much of his power of mind.
Her Phantasmion, 1837, is full of lyrics of considerable
originality and merit. With Sir Aubrey de Vere, who died
before his master, we have a certain disciple of Words-
worth and imitator of him, especially in the sonnet relig-
ious in tone. Other sonneteers contemporary were Ber-
nard Barton, the Quaker friend of Lamb and FitzGerald,
Charles Strong, inspired by the glories of ancient Rome,
and Thomas Doubleday, whose work in this kind begins
as early as 1818. Passing among other minor poets, the
lyrics, fierce and oriental, of Dr. John Leyden, linguist
and indefatigable traveller; the poems for childhood of
Ann and Jane Taylor, who are responsible, for example,
for "Twinkle, twinkle, httle star"; and the over-praised
mediocrity of such names as that of Henry Kirke White, we
note the poets of one poem, — among many. South Afri-
can Thomas Pringle, praised by Coleridge for his "Afar
in the desert," still popular in anthologies; Blanco White,
author of at least one fine sonnet; and Charles Wolfe, who
outdid Campbell in his "Hohenlinden" in the famous
"Burial of Sir John Moore," a genuine lyrical success in
its kind. Leigh Hunt, happy, impecunious, lovable Leigh
Hunt, is possibly better remembered for his easy prose,
his excellent translations, and his fascinating Autobio-
graphy, in which we get so just and admirable a picture of
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 169
the daily life and associations of the men who were mak-
ing literature during the earlier half of the century. Hunt
was a sympathetic friend and critic, believing in Words-
worth and championing his poetry and his theories from
the first. To his sympathy and encouragement, likewise,
both Keats and Shelley owed much, and his generous spirit
and discerning taste were always on the outlook for pro-
mise. The poetry of Hunt is more important historically
than intrinsically. His work is unequal, at times descend-
ing to flippancy and vulgarity, the worse that both appear
to have been unconscious. But Hunt was no mere trifler,
and in the anecdote, " Abou Ben Adhem," and the strange
dialogue, "The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit," though
neither is lyrical, has done two serious and original things
exceedingly well. Hunt's contributions of any perman-
ence to the lyric comprise two or three sonnets, — "The
Grasshopper and the Cricket," "The Nile," "On a Lock
of Milton's Hair," and little more.
In Byron England furnished a poet to international
literature for the first time; for Byron combined, as no
poet before him, a transcendent personality with a power
to represent certain immediate and universally interesting
characteristics of the si)irit of his age in memorable poetry.
Byron addressed himself to the world, the response was
immediate; and never was a reputation made so easily,
maintained so consciously and defiantly, and, take it all
in all, so justified in the event. Everything about Byron is
contradifiory. He came to his title when a child; but had
been ill bred for his sl.ition. Handsome, gifted, and of a
170 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
fascinating personality; he was reputed deformed. De-
voted and magnanimous in friendship, he was as danger-
ous as he was faithless in love. A fashionable man of the
world and a poseur before it, his love of liberty was so dis-
interested that he died for it. Byron acquiesced in things
as they are, neither in society nor in literature. In religion
he was sceptical without ceasing to believe; in poetry a
fervent admirer of Pope, yet one of the leaders of the
school of romantic revolt; in politics, a Tory nobleman
who for a time praised and justified Napoleon. Byron's
poetry, too, is contradictory, and upsetting to theorists.
One tells us that eloquence is heard, poetry only over-
heard; but here is authentic poetry a condition of which is
an audience. It was a need of the artistic nature of Byron
that his poetry attract attention and comment, whether
appreciative or adverse. Even his most despairing lyrical
cry would hardly have been uttered in the deeps and soli-
tudes that long retained the first reverberations of the
poetry of Wordsworth. Praise soothed Byron while it
dissatisfied him, criticism goaded him to new effort; hence
the immediate effect of Brougham's very just and cruel
review of Hours of Idleness in awakening the power and
sincerity that slumbered under the pose of the young dil-
ettante in poetry. Still we can never feel quite sure that
Byron is sincere, however he scorns hypocrisy and the
petty tricks of lesser egoists. Indubitably Byron de-
ceived himself as he has deceived his readers. One won-
ders if he really was as wicked, as world-weary, as despair-
ing of God and man as he believed himself to be at this.
THE ROMANTIC REVR'^AL 171
that, or the other interesting moment of his romantic
career. To Byron, the adventure of sentiment was a ne-
cessity, and it was more to him in memory tinged with
remorse, we may well believe, than in present enjoyment;
for Byron, like every true hedonist, was an idealist; and,
like every true idealist, he recognized with exquisite pain
every departure from accepted standards, whether of the
world's or of his own making, and measured them by their
deviations.
Byron was possessed to the full of the temperament
that makes for poetical expression, though not necessarily
in song. His personality was too concrete, too dramatic,
too self-centred for that. And while directness, elo-
quence, and a fine impetuosity, at times, are his, he has
little of the subtler lyrical music, as indeed he knew little
of that delicate fitting of word to thought by which poem,
stanza, or line of perfect craftsmanship comes to be in-
evitably what it is. It is the large bold stroke that is
Byron's, the meaning unmistakable and unfraught with
refinements, with spiritual or hidden graces. And this it
is that gives to Byron so wide a currency in foreign trans-
lation. 1 1 is poetry suffers less, done into other tongues,
than that of almost any other English poet: his thoughts
are never insular. This is perhaps one of the reasons why
Goethe said, in memorable words, that Byron was "dif-
ferent from all the rest [i.e., the other English poets] and
in the main greater."* To return to the lyrics of Byron,
* See Matthew Arnold's commenta on Goethe's estimate of Byron, in
Essays in Criticism, Second Scries, ed. 1900, pp. 179-180.
172 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
there are certain personal ones that have a poignancy
and fervor from their autobiographical relations: "When
we two parted," "Farewell, and if forever," and the
"Stanzas to Augusta," for example. Others, especially in
Hebrew Melodies, if less personal, are — that is, the best
of them — of equal beauty lyrically : first among them
"There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in
beauty like the night," and the lovely dirge, "O! snatched
away in beauty's bloom." There is amazing vigor, too, if
the fibre is somewhat coarse, in several poems such as
"The Destruction of Sennacherib," although they tres-
pass on narrative. In the fine ode, "The Isles of Greece,"
in Don Juan, we have the characteristic Byronic attitude
of a train of revery, vividly realized, over scenes that call
up the historic past and the present, so incongruous to
these departed glories. Yet with these and many other
successes, Byron as a lyrist is, for all his greatness, some-
what disappointing. Notwithstanding his eloquence and
stormy passion, there is a sameness about this handsome,
interesting, despairing lover, who tells his sorrows so volu-
bly and with an abandon so studied for effect. Moreover
the pose is not always consistently maintained, and there
are times when Byron sinks in his minor lyrics to the
sentimentality — rarely to the mere prettiness — of his
friend, Thomas Moore. Perhaps it is not fair to look to
the lyric, with its limitations of unity and definite struc-
ture, or to the sonnet's scanty plot of ground, for the wide
descriptive eloquence, the fervor that images of the past
call forth, the grasp of comedy, and the Titan's wielding
THE ROMANTIC RE\TVAL 173
force of scorn and satire that mark this glorious Lucifer
of the romantic morning.
No greater contrast can be imagined than that which
exists between Byron and Shelley, in whom the former
recognized, as did few of his contemporaries, a rival to
his own posthumous fame. That the stock of the mad
Byrons should have produced a genius who wrote comedy,
sentiment, and satire, and lived tragedy, is not in itself
surprising. That a race of fox-hunting squires, aristo-
cratic, mundane, and unimaginative, should have sent
forth a scion that contradicted every one of the family
traits, a passionate and impractical reformer, an inspired
rhapsodist in song and England's arch- lyrical poet —
surely such an outcome is enough to stagger the doc-
trine of heredity. Nor did Shelley's surroundings do
anything to modify these strange contradictions. Byron
tasted the world's pleasures and retained a relish for them
even after he had assured himself of their vanity. Shelley
was wholly unconventional, and led always less by his
passions than by his sensibilities and impulses, which were
commonly as unguided by judgment as to consequences
as his reforming theories were unsustained by a consid-
eration of the means to their attainment. In the word
remorse can be found the key to the contrasted tem-
peraments of these two remarkable men. Every act of
Byron's life produced its recoil; every sin walked with its
shadow. Defiant, wanton, and wilful as were most of
Byron's deflections from the conventional nionility of his
day, the basis of such a man's nature is moral. The moral
174 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
world of Shelley had no shadows; no act was rated by its
consequences, and consequences were neither foreseen
nor, when untoward, deplored; Shelley was absolutely
unmoral. He could never be got to understand, for ex-
ample, that he was morally responsible for the suicide
of his first wife, Harriet, or that the court was otherwise
than tyrannically unjust in depriving him of the custody
of their children after his desertion. When a literal inter-
pretation of his own rebel code as to freedom in love took
him abroad with Mary Godwin, and he heard, as he had
to hear, that Harriet and their children were unhappy,
he suggested that they join him and Mary, not in aban-
doned cynicism, but under the propulsion of a new and
childish impulse, that it was a pity that any one should
be unhappy. A sense of humor might have saved Shelley
from this preposterous proposition; but he had scarcely
an atom of humor in his inconsequential make-up. Hence
it happens that one of the kindest and most impulsively
generous of men, where immediate acts were concerned,
practised a heartless selfishness and disregard for others
that made him, when his theories "counter to God, mar-
riage and the constitution of England" were remembered
against him, even more abhorred by the proper, the con-
ventional, and the godly of his time than Byron.
The poetry of Shelley is throughout unworldly and un-
ruly, unsubstantial as to substance, all but perfect in
its art. His reforming impulse that embraced, in his im-
aginativeness, the entire world and the starry interspaces,
worked itself out in anathemas of dungeons, tyrants, and
THE ROAL\NTIC REVIVAL 175
iniquitous law and in the apotheosis of freedom, liberty,
and, above all, love. Nature, in the Wordsworthian
sense of the revealing beauty of even the tiniest flower,
Shelley knows nothing of; nature in Shelley's poetry is
light, ether, cloud, atmosphere, or, if he descends to earth,
rock, chasm, cave (a favorite word of his), or the ever-
changing sea with its depths, "green and cavernous." It
has been remarked that "his chief nature poem, *To a
Skylark,' loses the bird in the air, and only realizes a
voice and 'unbodied joy. '"^ Shelley's landscapes are
wide and the sky chiefly appears in them ; details are hope-
lessly unimportant and often disturbed as in a dream.
He observes nature only in her large features and in her
cataclysms. In the passion of Shelley there is light, ra-
diance, and scintillation, even at times iridescence, but
little warmth, steady color, or glow. Human feeling be-
comes, as it were, rarefied in Shelley's hands. The "Epi-
psychidion" is a rhapsodic apotheosis of abstract love,
however Emilia Viviuni may have intervened to fix on a
momentary object the ranging eye of the poet. He knew
Keats only by his poctrj', when indignation at his alleged
murder by the Edinburgh reviewers prompted his invi-
taticni to Keats to join him in Italy and fired his muse
to iin < .xcpiisite poetic expression of abstract friendsiiip
in "Adonais, " which takes its place for all time beside
Milton's "Lycid.'is." And when Shelley raises his voice
to the praise of beauty, it is neither a hymn to beauty
earthly or spiritual, Si)enser's distinction, but a ' Hymn
* Symon.s, The liomantic Movement, p. iibO.
176 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
to Intellectual Beauty." Indeed, to Shelley love itself
is only a fitful ecstatic kind of friendship, and friend-
ship a higher type of love, because less agitated by the
emotions of sex that interfere with its purity and serenity.
Few poets have been visited with more beautiful ideas
than Shelley or in greater numbers; and few have been
more consistently animated by noble thoughts and aspira-
tions. Base things and unclean have no place in his writ-
ings. He seems to have been impervious to the dirt of life
that at times spatters the best of his fellow-mortals. Al-
though he recurs with a sort of fascination to images of
death, crime, and horror, no poet, it has been remarked,
has touched such things so absolutely without defilement.
There is an elemental pure-mindedness about Shelley
that made his choice of such a theme, for example, as The
Cenci, like his treatment of it, one might almost say ab-
solutely innocent.
As to the quality that makes poetry lyrical, it may be
affirmed literally that Shelley outsings all the English
poets. For pure melody, for an exquisite adaptation of
the sounds of words in their succession to the meaning of
the thought, for rhapsodic outbursts and sustained flights
on the sweeping aerial pinions of song, there is no one his
peer. Take, for example, the ease and lithe rapidity of
these two stanzas of invocation "To Night":
Swiftly walk o'er the western wave.
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave, —
Where, all the long and lone daylight.
THE RO>L\NTIC REVrV\\L 177
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
^Tiich make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thj- form in a mantle gray.
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out.
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land.
Touching all with thine opiate wand —
Come, long-sought!
or the completeness of this little lyric:
Music, when soft voices die.
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose b dead.
Are heaped for the beloveds bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone.
Love itself shall slumber on.
In the "Indian Serenade," the rhapsodic "Skylark,"
the heauliful "Ode to the West Wind," and many other
like poems, Shelley has reached the perfection of lyrical
form and execution. Nor is he less successful in what the
old critics used to call "sustained efTort": the "Ilymn to
Intellectual Beauty," already mentioned, the "Ode to
Liberty," the beautiful "Stanzas written in Dejection,"
and the "Lines written in the Euganean Hills," all are
flights supported at a surprisingly high level, Shelley is
a .sovereign metrist; he manages trochaic and anapestic
metres (as in "The Sensitive Plant") with a perfect mas-
178 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
tery, and he is resourceful in metrical devices as he is
inventive of new and elaborate stanzas. The "Stanzas
written in Dejection " are Spenserian save that octosyl-
lables have been substituted for decasyllabics, although
the final alexandrine is preserved; the " Ode to Naples "
is elaborately Pindaric. Yet with all this melody, beauty,
radiance, enthusiasm, and song, why is it that Shelley can
never wholly satisfy? This inspired singer is not remark-
able for his thought (beautiful and elevating as it com-
monly is), for his wisdom, insight, or any of those "hu-
mane" qualities that offer us "the consolation and the
stay" that literature can give. This poet, drunk with the
wine of heaven and infatuated with the glories of the sky,
bids us only to look afar off into space, where light is azure
and gleaming and clouds are lit with rose and gold. And
for those of us who as yet have our feet on the soil of a
habitable globe, a diet of sunset, however uplifting, can
not alone suffice. There are those who believe that Shel-
ley's limitations were the price that he paid for his match-
less gift of song. However that may be, the adjectives,
impracticable, unavailing, and unsatisfying, are as applic-
able to Shelley and his poetry as are winged, luminous,
angelic, and divine.
If Shelley is the poet of the air, Keats is the poet of
the earth, that beautiful green world in which it is a pre-
sent joy sensuously to live, alive to the colors, the scents,
and sounds that nature lavishes, and conscious only too
poignantly of their fragility and of the fragility of man
among them. Shelley had the reform of a world at heart.
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 179
if not always on his hands; poetry was the light of heaven,
let into dark places to purify and dispel the mist, fog, and
contagion of the WTong that man has done to man. Byron
had his attitude to maintain before a listening world, his
singing robes becomingly to drape about the figure of the
most interesting lord and poet of his time; poetry was the
vehicle, waveringly sincere and insincere, of a great per-
sonality. To Keats, alone among his fellows, was poetry
alike a means and an end; and he showed a singleness of
heart in his devotion to it to be paralleled only among
the painters. In view of his poetic achievement, the cir-
cumstance that the father of Keats had once been a groom
is as irrelevant as the fact that the mother of Ben Jonson
married a bricklayer. Neither the education nor the as-
sociations of Keats were vulgar; and, save possibly for
Hunt, no nickname of passing criticism was more gratui-
tous than that of "the Cockney School," applied to Lamb,
Hunt, and Keats, men of personality and art so different.
In any estimation of Keats, the brevity of his life and
the tragedy that ended it must be taken into account.
Keats was dead before his twenty-sixth birthday. For
months he had known that he was doomed, and the suf-
ferings of his malady were exasperated to the degree of
torture by the thought that he must leave this beautiful
visible world with its inspiration for poetry, and a fame
among poets, great indeed, but incomplete. The notion
that Keats was a weakling, mawkishly sentimental and
uncontrolled, has long been given over. Keats was a man,
and, face to face with death, he displayed an admirable
180 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
intellectual fortitude. But never has poet possessed
nerves strung to a finer, a more delicate sense of beauty;
and never has artist distilled out of beauty a joy so ex-
quisite and complete. Keats is a close and loving ob-
server of nature; but he sees only the beautiful in her.
Her warfare, her cruelty and deprivation, he neither sees
nor knows; nor does he translate her in her significance to
the spirit of man. Keats, with all his wealth of imagery,
is unequalled in his precision of detail; what he sees he
sees clearly, producing his effects of atmosphere by a
cumulative mass of individual images rather than by a
Shelleian endeavor to paint light. Keats is the antithesis
poetically of Wordsworth, in place of whose artistic thrift
he practised a spendthrift liberality, in place of whose
scrutinizing search for the hidden meaning of things, he
was content to blazon in a gorgeous heraldry of his own
their outward glories.
With our attention concentrated on our subject we
must, to be logical, exclude some of the most distinctive
poetry of Keats, Endymion, Hyperion, Lamia, and that
marvellous bit of detailed description the unfinished
"Eve of St. Mark," as well as the exquisitely finished
"Eve of St. Agnes." The shorter and more strictly lyr-
ical poems, with much that was immature and more that
was only posthumously published, include at least a score
of poems that yield to none in our language for sustained
and superlative excellence and beauty. The splendid
Odes "To a Nightingale," "On a Grecian Urn," "Bards
of Passion," and the jovial "Lines on the Mermaid Tav-
THE RO^L\NTIC REWVAL 181
em," couched in the lithe octosyllables the Elizabethan
secret of which Keats surprised, the beautiful lines "To
Autumn," the creed of the romanticists set forth in the
fervid lines "Sleep and Poetry," and "I stood tiptoe upon
a little hill " (though these are not strictly lyric) — who
does not know them as among the choicest of English
poems? Keats wrote many sonnets, not all of them
equally successful, some of them, such as the one "On
first Looking into Chapman's Homer," "To Fame,"
"The Grasshopper and Cricket," among the best in the
language. The following, not much quoted in antholo-
gies, has a grace of its own:
Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance.
In what diviner moments of the day
Art thou most lovely ? When gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance.
Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance
Of sober thought ? Or when starting away
With careless robe to meet the morning ray
Thou spar'st the flowers in thy mazy dance ?
Haply 't is when thy ruby lips part sweetly.
And so remain because thou listenest:
But thou to i)Ieasc wert nurtured so completely
Tliat I can never tell what mood is best.
I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly
Trips it before Apollo than llic rest.
But sufli, after all, is not the most distinctive work of
Keats. It is the touch of magic that presaged the pre-
Kapliaelitcsand the Celtic revival for which Keats stands
historirally memorablo. This is the touch of "La Belle
Dame sans Morci" wliirh has all tlie magical charm and
182 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the weird suggestiveness of "Christabel" itself, without
the waves and passes of legerdemain that mark that
famous effort.
I saw pale kings, and princes too.
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd — "La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake.
And no birds sing.
This is the absolute simplicity of perfectly assured art.
It is difficult to follow those that find in Keats a decadent
note. Sensitive to every impression of the senses and
sensuous in the enjoyment of them, Keats, judged at
large, is pure as mother earth is pure. Disease wrought
havoc on the nerves of the man and he cried out in an-
guish; but his mind ruled him to the last, as it ruled to
shape and inform his imperishable poetry.
Youngest of the great lights of the romantic school,
Keats was the first to die. In 1822, the year following,
Shelley was drowned; and two years after, Byron died of
fever at Missolonghi in Greece. Neither Keats nor Shel-
ley left the world assured of the fame in store for him.
The public that called for ten editions of Irish Melodies in
THE ROM\NTIC REVTV^AL 183
some twenty years, that approved Rogers and Campbell,
and read the narratives of Scott for lyrical poetry,
could have made nothing of the ecstasies of Shelley or the
raptures of Keats. The poetry of Byron was of a more
comprehensible nature, and, aided by his lordship and the
scandals about him, compelled attention and admiration,
every voice, even those raised against him adding fresh
laurels to his fame. During the twenties and early thirties
Byron carried everything before him. He silenced Scott
and threw Wordsworth for the nonce into an almost total
eclipse. To the young and romantic he was the ideal poet
and hero; and the few who hesitated to attempt to write
like him at least endeavored to despond and despair with
him. Deeper influences, however, were also at work in
poetry. The tide of Wordsworth was soon to return bear-
ing back what was best in his poetry to final acceptance.
The popularity of Burns and Scott continued potent, es-
pecially in Scotland. More important, the study of Eliza-
bethan authors, to which Lamb and Ilazlitt had pointed
a way that Coleridge had irregularly blazed, was soon to
manifest itself in a remarkable series of dramas, belong-
ing in point of com[)osition mostly to the years following
the death of Byron, and the work of Wells, Darlcy, Ilorne,
Wade, and, above all, of Beddocs. The influence of Cole-
ridge, Shelley, and Keats on younger poets came later
and belongs, in its fullness, to the new wave of roman-
ticism that animated so variously the poets of the reign
of Victoria.
Descending, then, to the many lessor men who added
184 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
their voices to this tuneful lyrical chorus, there was the
lyrically devotional John Keble, a voice premonitory of
the Oxford Movement to come. The year 1827 has been
described as "a kind of annus mirabilis oi religious verse."
In it appeared not only The Christian Poet, one of the
many volumes of copious James Montgomery, but The
Course of Time by Robert Pollok, the posthumously pub-
lished Hymns of Bishop Heber, and Keble's first volume,
The Christian Year. Modern times have not been product-
ive of writers of hymns and devotional verse who have
happened likewise to be poets of mark. None of the
names just mentioned contradict this assertion, nor do
those of Bishop Mant nor Milman the historian. Keble
alternates faint echoes of the Words wo rthian cult of na-
ture with an earnest and ritualistic piety. Only a fellow
churchman or a Tory critic could have thought for a mo-
ment of comparing Keble's poetry, in its uniform clerical
black and white, with gorgeous and fervid George Her-
bert.^ A far truer poet was John Clare, who was born a
pauper and died insane ; but who sang with loving tender-
ness and in true poetic spirit of the natural objects that
surrounded his life of toil and misery in the village and
country-side that inspired him. There were, too, the
Scotchmen, John Gibson Lockhart, biographer of Scott,
who opened up Spanish minstrelsy to British readers
in his Ancient Spanish Ballads, translated with a spirit
that gives them a place of their own in English poetry;
' For a sane estimate of Keble, see A. C. Benson, "Poetry of Keble,"
Essays, 1896, p. 184.
THE RO^L\NTIC REVIVAL 185
William Thorn, who continued Scottish traditional song
and balladry where Tannahill and Hogg had left it;
and William Motherwell, who tried lyrics in the man-
ner of nearly everybody and succeeded in bettering
Campbell at least and in tapping, in his Norse Poems,
a new lyrical vein. A choicer spirit informs the sonnets
and other lyrics of Hartley Coleridge, who inherited all his
father's inertia and hesitating indolence with an insuf-
ficient draught of his poetic genius. Hartley Coleridge's
master and model was Wordsworth and, what is more,
Wordsworth at his best ; yet despite some memorable son-
nets and a song or two, such as "She is not fair to out-
ward view" (of which Wordsworth himself might have
been proud), both the poet and his work leave on the
mind an impression of ineffectiveness. Passing Thomas
Love Peacock, best recollected, notwithstanding a lyric
or so of distinction, for his incomparable wit and humor
in rime, John Hamilton Reynolds, friend and companion
in poetic adventure of Keuts, and Laman Blanchard,
preacher, jester, and writer of society verses, we reach in
Hood the most gifted of the poets that fall between the
early romanticists and the great Victorians.
It was the misfortune of Thomas Hood that he was
compelled to earn his bread by his pen, and that his clever
wit and a readiness amounting to genius as a punster
should have oiiscured, to those who knew him only
pofjularly, the finer qualities that dislinguisli his serious
jxx-try. Hood's life was one of continued struggle against
ill fortune and ill iicallh; and he maintained it bravely,
186 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
using his humor as a mask for suffering and a relief from
the drudgery of daily literary toil. Most of the great
poets, whose names we have passed in review, were nota-
ble for the singleness of their mood, when all is told: the
meditative calm of Wordsworth, the eloquent despair of
Byron, Keats and the apotheosis of beauty. Hood suf-
fered in his versatility, which ranged from the wildest fun
and nonsense to a mastery of tragical remorse, of super-
natural dread and of pathos almost unequalled, from
the twist of a word into an epigram to a Keats-like delight
in the details of the changing seasons ("Autumn"), and
to sonnets (those especially to " Death " and " Silence " for
example) of a depth and gravity that Wordsworth might
not have disdained. The hand of Hood is firm and he is
always the controlling artist in his best work, excelling in
metrical inventiveness and daring, as in the marvellously
sustained and absolutely successful dactylics and triple
rimes of "The Bridge of Sighs." But if Hood shared some
of these poetical gifts with the greater poets, in his two
most famous poems (that just named and "The Song of
the Shirt"), he shared, too, that bitter indignation at the
wrongs and sorrows of humanity that dignified the bald-
ness of Crabbe and roused the generous eloquence of
Ebenezer Elliott in his Corn Law Rhymes. Only Hood
could have lifted the slave of the needle and the trag-
edy of lost womanhood into the rarefied atmosphere of
poetry; for poetry these two universal songs are, despite
their bitterness and their scathing arraignment of the
cruelty of man to his own kind. The pity, the tender-
I
THE ROMANTIC REMVAL 187
ness, the certainty and outspoken naturalness of it all
— there are no poems of their kind such as these; and
their burning words, from the world's utilitarian point
of view, are worth many odes to skylarks, nightingales,
and linnets, for the material betterment that they
wrought.
It might be difficult to find four writers more in con-
trast as men and authors than Macaulay, Praed, Mangan,
and Barnes; indeed, only their likeness in years and the
circumstance that they all began to write well before the
accession of Queen Victoria could justify the treatment of
them together. As to his verse. Lord Macaulay is the
lineal descendant of Sir Walter Scott; for to both, the
picturesque aspect of history, with a vivid reproduction
of what each takes to be the mood of the time, is the main
consideration. Macaulay wrote the ringing lines of his
"Battle of Naseby " when he was twenty-four, little exag-
gerating his own Whig spirit in the mask of his "Obadiah
Bind-their-Kings-in-Chains-and-their-Nobles-with-Links-
of-Iron"; and it was to this method that he afterwards
adhered in his popular Lays of Ancient Rome. Whether
these swinging rhetorical verses are to be designated
poetry any more than Scott's ready narratives in verse
may be argued by those interested in these nice distinc-
tions. Macaulay 's lines vibrate like blasts of the trumpet,
and they are as clamorous and as brazen. But the instru-
ment is fitted to the tune, and whether we prefer the lute
or the zither is a matter impertinent. The irni)etus that
Macaulay gave to the martial historical lyric has con-
188 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
tinued in a well-defined line of writers to our own day.
Motherwell, with his "Cavalier's Song" and "Trooper's
Ditty," was prior it is true, and Aytoun's Lays of the
Scottish Cavaliers, 1848, were perhaps equally inspired by
Scott. But with Richard Monckton Milnes's Poems
Legendary and Historical, 1844, we have honorable if not
always successful imitation ; and with Sir Francis Doyle,
successor to Matthew Arnold in the chair of poetry at
Oxford much later, we have Macaulay's metallic heroic
note, now translated with the current of the time to the
scene of England's broad world empire, and suggesting,
we may feel sure, the fanfare of imperialism that is still
resounding in our ears. Noble and stirring poems are
Doyle's "The Private of the Buffs " and "The Red Thread
of Honor." Less notable, though stirred by the martial
spirit of the moment, are the lyrics of the Crimean War,
Gerald Massey's War Waits, Sidney Dobell's England in
Time of War, and Dobell's and Alexander Smith's Sonnets
of the War.
Returning to pre- Victorian times, Winthrop Mack-
worth Praed, like Macaulay, was a brilliant collegian and
trained for the bar. Like Macaulay, too, Praed com-
bined authorship with a busy Parliamentary career, cut
short by his untimely death, in 1839, at the age of
thirty-seven. Praed is easily the first among the poets
who wrote vers de societe in his day. In his best verses of
the type, he habitually treads with light and certain step
the perilous way that winds between the heartlessness of
satire and sentiment grown mawkish. In absolute con-
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 189
trast with this self-contained and suflScient art of Praed,
so observant and so artistically objective, is the original
and intensely personal poetry of James Clarence Mangan.
Of humble origin in Dublin, Mangan toiled for years as a
copyist in a scrivener's office, dividing his hard-earned
pittance with relatives needier than himself. Of a shrink-
ing nature, given to analysis of his own feelings, in ill
health and intemperate in desperation at times, Mangan
passed a life of such seclusion that we really know very
little of its details. He appears to have mastered several
out-of-the-way languages, though his native Irish was
apparently not among them; and he left behind him many
poems that purported to be translations from Hafiz,
Mesihi, and other oriental poets; as others were modelled
on old Gaelic traditions, though how closely or whether
not largely his own, remain matters problematic. Man-
gan's range as a lyrist is limited, but intensely the expres-
sion of himself. His despair rings true and is no echo of
Byron's. In a vivid poem, entitled "The Nameless One,"
he bids his song "roll forth" and
Tell liow, with K<'ni'is wasted,
Hctruyed in friciKlshij), hcfiKilcd in love,
Willi .si)iril .sliiijwrecked, and young hopes blasted.
He .still, .still strove;
And tell how now, amid wreck, and .sorrow.
And want, and sickness, and houseless nights.
He bides in calmness the silent morrow
That no ray lights.
There is a cry of Ihc heart in lines like these .sui)crior even
190 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
to "Dark Rosaleen," Mangan's best known lyric and it-
self a glorious allegorical expression of fervid patriotism.
In any anthology of Irish verse Mangan sits among the
princes. In "Dark Rosaleen" and elsewhere he appears
to have anticipated the music of repetition afterwards
so effectively developed by Poe. William Barnes, mem-
orable for his poems in the Dorset dialect, was a remark-
ably versatile man alike in the range of his study and
literary work and in the various vocations of school-
master, engraver, musician, and philologist. Barnes is no
such singer as we find even among some of the lesser fol-
lowers of Burns, but the lyrical spirit is in him, and he has
distilled genuine poetry out of the familiar happenings of
rural life and raised his provincial dialect of Dorsetshire
to a place in literature.
The revival of the literary drama that came between the
publication of Shelley's Cenci, in 1819, and the accession
of Mctoria cannot be discussed here. This revival was
due, in the main, to the renewed study and reading of
Elizabethan drama, and the occasional lyrics that it in-
spired echo those of the old age. There are no lyrics in
Wells's Joseph and his Brethren with which this revival
began; and the lyrical poetry of Thomas Wade, especially
his sonnets, justly described as "thoughtful, tender, orig-
inal, and strong," does not occur in his several dramas.^
The varied and interesting poetry, too, of Richard Henry
Home, dramatic, epic, narrative, and didactic, yields
^ Wade's Fijty Sonnets are reprinted in Literary Anecdotes of the
Nineteenth Century, 1895, London.
THE ROM.\NTIC REMVAL 191
very few poems that are strictly lyrical. The lyrist of the
group is that strange reincarnation of the genius that
animated Webster or Tourneur, contorted with a strand
of modern introspection, Thomas Lovell Beddoes; and his
is an isolated and distinctive position among our modern
poets. Beddoes is practically a man of a single work,
Death's Jest Book, a tragedy of rare poetic and literary
value, published in 1850, the year after the poet's death
by his own hand. It belongs in point of plan and composi-
tion to his early manhood. Beddoes, like Wells, held com-
plaisant mediocrity in a haughty disdain. To quote his
owTi words: "It is good to be tolerable, or intolerable, in
any other line; but Apollo defend us from brewing all our
lives at the quintessential pot of the smallest ale Par-
nassian."' The lyrics of Beddoes are unequal in execution,
however the animating force of poetry may sustain them.
At his best, for a weird originality of thought and a com-
petence, if not always a music of expression, they will
hold their own with the best. John Webster would have
compassed the effect of this stanza more vigorously, but
hardly would even he have bettered it:
^'ourifj sijul, pill olT your (Icsh, and come
With ino into the silent tomb.
Our bed is lovely, dark, and sweet;
'I'lic earth will .swinf; ns, lus she goes,
lieneuth our coverlid of snows.
And the warm leaden sheet.
Dear and dear is their poisoned note,
> Quoted by R. Gamett in his article on Beddoes, Miles, Poets of the
Century, KcatH to Lylton. n. d., p. !iH.
192 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
The little snakes' of silver throat.
In mossy skulls that nest and lie.
Ever singing "die, oh! die."
As to the other names of dramatic note in these pre-
Victorian days, the songs of Sir Henry Taylor, whether
in Philip van Artevelde or elsewhere, are really pitiful for
a Southeyan of such estimable repute; and those of Bul-
wer, Lord Lytton, which are equally remote from the
influences of our earlier poets, belong to the easy, trivial
school of Moore and Procter, touched with the prevalent
Byronism.
In this chapter we have considered the leaders of the
romantic revival and enumerated some of their lesser
brethren who wrote lyrically. We have treated many
who, although they began to write earlier, wrote on into
the reign of Queen Victoria. We must defer to the next
chapter such as began to write only in her reign or those
whose actual poetical activity received the impetus that
placed it in its true orbit subsequent to the queen's
accession. The thirties wrought havoc among the poets;
Scott and Crabbe died in 1882, Coleridge and Lamb in
1834, Hogg a year later. Among the names mentioned
above, Southey, Hood, and Darley lived on into the
forties, the two latter active in literature to the last.
Moore closed his long career with his Poetical Works in ten
volumes, 1840-41, and lived on for nearly a dozen years;
Hunt wrote to the last, publishing Stories in Verse as
late as 1855, four years before his death. Procter's work
like that of Peacock, Elliott, Wells, and several others,
THE ROi\L\NTIC REVIVAL 193
belonged, by Victoria's time, to the past. Wells and Pea-
cock survived into the seventies; Taylor, Barnes, and
Home, into the eighties. But among the veterans of
early nineteenth-century poetry, Wordsworth and Landor
alone continued productive far into the reign. Words-
worth wrote and published poetry in six decades; Landor
in eight, bridging the age of Cowper and that of Tenny-
son, Browning, and Swinburne, whither we are now to
follow him.
CHAPTER VII
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS
ITH the great Victorian laureate dead, even
now only a score of years, and his throne
unfilled, however occupied — as who could
fill that spacious chair of regal poetic state?
— it seems all but incredible that verse of Alfred Tenny-
son's should have seen print in the year 1826. It was in
that year that Poems by Two Brothers (there were really
three) was published with little promise, it must be con-
fessed, of the glory that was to come. Nor were Tenny-
son's first unaided poetical efforts, the volumes of 1830
and 1832, however promising to discerning minds, wholly
undeserving of the disapproval that the Quarterly Review
and Blackwood's meted out to them. But Tennyson was
not born to failure; and, unlike most men of sensitive
poetic endowment, an iron will nerved him to snatch
success from defeat. For ten years he was silent, undi-
verted by temptation to other occupations, living simply
and with economy as he untiringly perfected his art; and
with the Poems of 1842, the added ones and those revised,
it was known — if still only to the few — that another
great English poet had arisen to maintain the high tra-
ditions of the past. The Tennysons were gentle folk,
and all that tradition, restraint, cultivated surroundings.
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 195
college life, and reverence could do for him had part in
the poet's education. Neither passion, ill health, nor
extreme poverty assailed him; and soon popular acclaim
was his. He succeeded Wordsworth as poet laureate in
1850, and was raised to the peerage as Lord Tennyson in
1884. A chronology of the books of poems of Tennyson,
contributed to the Memoir of his life by his son, comprises
sixty-three items from the early issues just mentioned to
a complete one volume edition in 1894, two years after
the poet's death; and this by no means includes all separ-
ate and foreign issues. Tennyson's later years reaped a
golden reward, and the popularity of his poetry in his
lifetime was such as no English poet had known before
him.
Tennyson grew up with poetry about him. His two bro-
thers wrote other verse besides their first joint endeavor.
Charles, who took the name of Turner on succeeding to
his uncle's estates, was an excellent sonneteer after the
Wordsworthian manner. Frederick, after a first volume,
Days and Hours, in 1854, recurred to poetry in his elder
years, and more resembles, in weaker mould, the poetic
lineaments of his great brother. Both suffered from his
august shadow as who save the greatest might not?
Tennyson's friend, too, Arthur Ilallam, in whose memory
he wrote the magnificent requiem, "In Memoriani," left
at his untimely death some estimable minor poetry; and
Edward FitzCIf-rald, whose affectionate enthusiasm never
allowed that there was a greater Tennyson than that of
the first fruitage of the volume of 1842, afterwards at-
196 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
tained for himself an enviable popularity as one who bet-
tered the translations that he made to give to the dead,
especially in Omar Khayyam, a living repute. The earliest
literary influence on Tennyson was indubitably that of
Keats. A similar definition of line, clarity of vision, capa-
bility in descriptive detail, and limpidity of diction are
common to both; and both are ruled by the spirit of
beauty. But Tennyson has neither the passion of Keats
nor his sensuous glow of color. However, Tennyson did
not stop here. Wordsworth in his narrative poetry and
"subjective view of nature," Spenser in his pictorial
medisevalism, Shakespeare for the lilt of his song — all
these had Tennyson studied. There are touches of the
Byronic despair in Maud, and he disdained not the hec-
tic art of the pre-Raphaelites, his contemporaries, in an
occasional lyric, though neither sits naturally upon him.
As to the classics, never has poet so absorbed them and
so skilfully and legitimately employed reminiscence to
illustrate and glorify his lines. If there is a quality in
poetry peculiarly Tennyson's, it is the quality of distinc-
tion. He elevates whatever he touches, not so much be-
cause he transfigures common things as because of his
deft selection of what is fit for noble and decorative treat-
ment. Tennyson is a past master in all the graces of his
art; awkwardness, obscurity, carelessness, and a medium
unfitted to the poetical ends of the moment are intoler-
able to him and, in his finished poetry, unknown. In the
realm of his beautiful art, taste rules perennial; however
ornate and elaborate, all is fitting, moderate, fashioned to
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 197
a nicety and, at need, restrained to the artistic purposes
in hand. Tennyson is a great technician, and his example
has raised the art of English poetry to a higher level.
This is especially true of his songs, which often have a
witching melody of words combined with a deeper har-
mony of spirit that is unmatchable elsewhere. Take, for
example, the wistful passion of "O that 't were possible,"
the delicious babble of the "Song of the Brook," the tread
of arms in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and a
hundred other perfect lyrics our very familiarity with
which causes us critically to do them less than justice.
Take, too, on the score of its novelty as well as its beauty
and touch with modem science, this supremely original
invocation which no repetition in quotation can stale:
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-wcjrid, and rise
To glass hersf'lf in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.
Ah, hear me with Ihco, smoothly borne,
Dij) forward under starry liglit.
And move me to my marriage-mom.
And round again to h;i[)j)y night.
In a consi(loratif)n of the lyrical poetry of Tennyson
a[)Jirt frDrii jiis dramas, the Idj/ll.s, and other narrative
verse, we are confronted with the increasing (lifliciill y of
preserving a clear line of demarcation. No one could
198 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
pause to question the absolute lyrical quality of the song
in "The Brook," "Break, break, break," or the exquisite
songs of The Princess, "The splendor falls" and "Tears,
idle tears." But there are scores of beautiful poems in
Tennyson the essence of which is poetic description, which
convey none the less the impression of a single mood how-
ever they may suggest a situation. A lyrical quality in-
heres in them all to a greater or less degree. Such are
the early poems on fair women, "Mariana," "Madeline,"
and the rest, of which it has been profanely said that
they have the family likeness of the perfect, conventional
beauty preserved in the engravings of the old gift-books.
But such, too, in fuller degree, are the beautiful classic
"Q^none," descriptive and narrative to a certain extent
though it be, the tender and thoughtful "De Profundis,"
a poem of solemn welcome to the poet's new-born son,
dramatic lyrics such as "The Two Sisters," and the effect-
ive and touching "Rizpah." Even "In Memoriam,"
best described as a sequence of elegies bound together by
one pervading sense of irreparable loss, is in its subject-
ive introspection as truly lyrical as "Adonais" itself. Of
the four great English elegies of friendship, "Lycidas,"
"Adonais," "Thyrsis," and "In Memoriam," the last
is the most elaborate, the longest, and that in which,
without losing any of its poignancy, mourning friendship
is most effectively universalized. Less than half of the
poem deals directly with Tennyson's sorrow for his dead
friend, Arthur Hallam; the rest displays the author's
philosophy of life in terms the beauty, the poetic charm,
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 199
and music of which are its best claim to the regard of pos-
terity. Yet it is just this intrusion into poetry of his
philosophy and what is far worse his politics (both of
which are ephemeral) that gave the poem its popularity;
as it is this same intrusion which has caused the great
repute of the poet sensibly to wane in the generation that
knew not his works when they canvassed living issues.
Tennyson is conventional in his religion, his politics, his
philosophy, and in his criticism of life, and he threads
ever with circumspection the safe, the unenthusiastic,
the uninspired middle way. For the great problems of
life and death, however he may invoke the discoveries of
sciences and the ratiocinations of rationalistic thought,
he has no real solution, and his religiosity in the face of
his half-hearted scepticism, leaves us almost in doubt at
times as to his candor. Unquestionably there was in this
great artist a fastidious shrinking from the decisive, the
disagreeable, the inevitable, a want of sympathy with
much in life that has appealed and ever will appeal to the
generous-hearted and truly liberal-minded, and hence a
frequent substitution of sentiment for feeling, of the
correct attitude (all things considered) for that divine
extravagance anrl forgetfulness of self that constitutes the
magnanimous partisanship of a generous soul. Tennyson
became deservedly the most i)oi)ular of Victorian j)oets
because, with a distinction of poetic style and diction all
but unmatched and an artistry incomparable, he con-
trived to translate the current ideas of his time into the
terms of exquisite jjoetry and to conjure, as with a ma-
200 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
gician's wand, a transfigured picture of a chivalrous age
that never was save in the poet's picturesque imagina-
tion. Tennyson's poetry is like some commodious and
hospitable modern structure that seeks not ambitiously
to peer into the sky nor assumes a false lowliness; broad,
beautiful, fitted artistically to the needs of men and
women of modern cultivation and correctness of conduct
and thought, but neither the harborer of the mystic who
dwells among the beatitudes of heaven, nor a refuge for
the lowly and sin-worn wayfarer whose need is consola-
tion in the rough ways of the world.
To turn from Tennyson to Robert Browning is to en-
counter one of the most striking contrasts in all literature;
and nothing so argues the range, the sweep, and breadth
of the Victorian age as this existence in it, side by side,
of two giants in poetry, each so complete in his own
greatness, each so diverse in spirit, art, and ideals of
life. Were our consideration in this book the poetry of
Browning at large, difficult Paracelsus should claim our
attention, impracticable Sordello, Strafford, A Blot in the
'Scutcheon, and the rest of the dramas with their wealth
of thought, their psychological discernment, and their
effective eloquence so often ineffectively misplaced. But
we are fortunately here concerned with that indubitably
greater Browning whose deep and varied lyricism, like his
daring idealism, the product of a rich, fervid, and amaz-
ingly honest nature, places him irremovably among the
very greatest of English poets. And here, even more than
in the case of Tennyson, is the chronicler of the lyric at a
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 201
loss to know where to draw the line of distinction between
what we have been wont to accept without question as
lyrical poetry and those contiguous provinces into which
trespasses the objectiveness of narration or surges the pas-
sion of the drama. Of the former, with its cool aloofness,
the poetry of Browning furnishes few examples : that was
the province of Tennyson. As to the dramatic lyric.
Browning may be said almost to have created it. He
loves to take a dramatic situation and flash the light of
intuitive discovery upon the passions that arise out of it.
He delights to let an imagined personage, often realized
with the fewest possible strokes, betray the life that he
has led, the secrets of his inmost soul, under stress of the
revealing moment. This is sometimes called Browning's
power of psychological analysis; but it has often neither
the leisurely unfolding of argument nor the remoteness
and suj)prcssion of feeling that should properly charac-
terize a process so allied to the frigid inquiries of science.
"Sludge the Medium," "Prince Ilohenstiel-Schwangau,"
or even "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's "
may correctly enough he classified as products of such an
analysis, however conducted l)y means of monologue or
dialogue; but the instant art of "Porphyria's Lover," "In
a Gondola," or "My Last Duchess" is essentially lyrical
for its concision, unity of emotion, and intensity, inasmuch
as such poems arc written not for the situation (much less
for the presentation of events in sequence) but for the cnu)-
tion or passion involved, which to Browning is always the
main thing. If we must have a name for something at once
202 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
so distinctive and recognizable, we might call such poems
lyrics of projected emotion. Drama they are not, for they
have neither the potentiality of struggle nor development
by means of sequence of event. The emotion is transfused,
it is true, into the personages involved; but the insight,
the clarity of vision that flashes upon the momentary
situation a light that reveals the past that has led to it,
both in its relation to its present environment and there-
fore to all the world of right and wrong, this is the poet's
own, as subjective in its quality as the veritable utterance
of his own heart.
Like Tennyson, Browning was neither subjected to the
stress of need that hurries unwilling steps along unchosen
paths, nor could wayward passion ever have shaken a
nature so essentially wholesome, vigorous, and humane.
Unlike Tennyson, Browning's education was less that
regular submission to the accepted processes of culture,
hallowed by the consent of generations, than the desult-
ory gathering in of many influences, guided by innate
taste, curiosity, and a thirst to know the mainsprings of
the thoughts and consciences of his fellow-men. Religious
dissent, less personal than inherited, long sojourn in
foreign lands, association with men of difTerent race and
station from his own, leisure to work, think, and write
as he would — all these things went to the humanizing
of the poet. In consequence there is an unconventional-
ity about Browning, an openness of spirit, an ingenuous
unconsciousness of precedent and of that correctness of
procedure based on much pondering of the past that
THE VICTORL\N LYRISTS 203
was characteristic of the narrower and more self-centred
genius of Tennyson. The immediate inspiration of Brown-
ing's boyhood's muse was Shelley and, to a lesser degree,
Keats ; but to neither did his strong-thewed poetic genius
submit to the degree that makes any of his work merely
imitative. Between Browning and Shelley there is the
kinship of that fervid idealism that counts neither means
nor consequences where an eternal principle is involved.
For Shelley's questionings and wilful revolt against con-
stituted authority where it comes into conflict with ideas,
Browning substituted an optimistic faith in the essential
goodness and harmony of God's world that nothing could
shake or dismay. BrowTiing began his career as a poet with
the publication of Pauline in 1833, admitted to his later
collected works only on sufferance. The often repeated
tale that the earlier volumes of Browning were failures,
neglected by reader and critic alike where not hailed by
the latter with outrageously adverse criticism, has been
conclusively disproved. Browning's strong personality
attracted attention from the first, and he acquired instant-
aneous recognition among the few that read and care for
poetry. Wordsworth, Landor, Carlyle, and many lesser
men of letters at once acclaimed him and became his
friends; though, after his first volumes, he suffered from
the rank and file of readers and reviewers a long neglect,
and even as late as the death of Mrs. Browning, in 1801,
her popularity ecli{)sed that of her husband. But no per-
sonality so virile, no art so aggressively independent and
self-assured as Browning's, could fail to call down the
204 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
anathemas of those who follow precedents instead of cre-
ating them. And, indeed, there was much, and remained
no less, in the poetic art of Browning that was crabbed,
difficult, and hard even for his friends to justify. Happily
his obscurity, his eccentricities, later to become more and
more confirmed, his predilection for prosaic casuistry and
attention in verse to themes in their natures incapable of
yielding to the spirit and the embellishments of poetry,
none of these things concern us in the consideration of
that choicer element, almost always present, at times
almost unexpectedly, in his lyrical poetry.
Of lyrics in the strictest acceptation of the term, the
song of love, of war, of nature. Browning has written his
share, many of them among the most beautiful poems in
the language. Where, indeed, shall we find surpassed the
verbal richness of the song from Paracelsus beginning,
Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
the gallop and clatter of the " Cavalier Tunes," the thought-
ful beauty of " Evelyn Hope," or the rapture of the lines,
Nay but you, who do not love her.
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught — speak truth — above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!
More frequently Browning places his lyrics in the setting
of a dramatic situation; as, for example, the passionate
song on the moth's kiss and the bee's of " In a Gondola,"
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 205
or the incomparable songs of Pippa Passes. From the
last, take the following as peculiarly illustrative of the
revealing flash on a momentary situation, alluded to
above :
Give her but a least excuse to love me!
When — where —
How — can this arm establish her above me.
If fortune fixed her as my lady there.
There already, to eternally reprove me?
("Hist!" — said Kate the Queen;
But "Oh!" cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
" 'T is only a page that carols unseen,
Crumbling your hounds their messes!")
Is she wronged? — To the rescue of her honor.
My heart!
Is she poor? — What costs it to be styled a donor?
Merelj' an earth to cleave, a sea to part.
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!
(" Nay, list!" — bade Kate the Queen;
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
" 'T is only a page that carols unseen.
Fitting your hawks their jesses!")
If we enlarge our conco[)li()n of the lyric as suggested in the
paragraj)!] before the last, in number as in quality — the
quality of an intense and sincere individuality — Brown-
ing is at once one of the most productive and in many
respects the choicest lyrist of the Victorian age. His range
is a dozen times that of the laureate, and his music, while
less technically faultless, is far more varied and of a
deeper, richer tone. In Browning's I)octr^^ <lislinction
of style and happiness of phrase — both of whicii at need
are present — arc swept away in a sincerity of passionate
206 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
utterance that makes the mere consideration of such
things a prating about idle baubles. Where other poets
leave us coolly critical of their skill or warmed at most
with approbation. Browning carries us away and leaves
us glowing with the emotion that he inspires. This can
be said of few lyrical poets in our critical age, atrophied
as we are in feeling, intellectually satisfied wholly with
naught.
The history of literature knows no parallel to the beau-
tiful marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.
Sofa-ridden she had been almost from childhood, a recluse
save for the small circle about her, when her strong, hope-
ful lover burst like the sunlight into her darkened room
and carried her away into life and happiness. Elizabeth
Barrett was remarkably precocious, publishing, in 1820
(when no more than a child), an epic in three books on the
battle of Marathon and An Essay on Mind not much
later. In both the Popean couplet rules supreme, a verse
with its great author then recently championed by Byron
against the attacks of Bowles; and Byron himself, ill fol-
lowed, was among Miss Barrett's models in her earliest
lyrical verse. With the translation of Prometheus Bound,
published with other poems in 1833, and the steady stream
of four successive volumes between 1835 and 1844, the
fame of Miss Barrett as the first of English poetesses be-
came firmly established. In fact, by 1846, when she be-
came Mrs. BrowTiing, the recognition accorded her was
far more certain than that of her husband; and she died in
1861 with a repute which Browning himself had by no
THE VICTORUN LYRISTS 207
means as yet attained. Mrs. Browning's was a life full of
noble aspiration; poetry was to her no mere art, the in-
valid's diversion, but a weapon wherewith to fight for the
liberty of her beloved Italy and for the betterment of the
downtrodden about her. These things have stamped
many of her longer poems with the ephemeral character-
istics that belong to all applied art. With a power of feel-
ing often as exquisite as it is always sincere, Mrs. Brown-
ing combined a facility of expression that betrayed her at
times into diffuseness and a profusion of detail. Un-
fortunately this, with the inequality of her mastery over
rhythm and rime, is precisely the thing which is most cer-
tain to defeat lyrical success. We find poem after poem
beginning well, but sustained too long or in a tone that
substitutes thought about emotion for the emotion itself.
Where natural feeling is concerned, as in the touching
"Child's Grave at Florence," Mrs. Browning is seldom at
fault; but she was emulous of more ambitious things, and
her ambitions and her social sympathies, as in Aurora
Leigh, carried her beyond the wide borders of poetry,
however poetical and memorable this story in verse re-
mains in parts. Mrs. Browning's religious feeling, which
is strong if conventional, produced some excellent hymns;
a romantic s()irit, less pronounced however, rules in such
fine poems as "Bertha in the Lane" and "Lady (jlrrald-
ine's Courtship," or the sf)iritod "Rhyme of the Duchess
May" (tliough no one of them is strictly lyrical), while
the genuine i)alhos of "Cow[)er's Crave" must always
find an honoraljlc place among shorter English elegies.
208 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
In contrast with her great husband, Mrs. Browning dis-
plays a sure touch in the sonnet, although she manages
its effects of varied music in a manner that falls short of
the greatest sonneteers. It was Browning's love that
inspired in her the finest outburst of lyricism, the fervid,
passionate Sonnets from the Portuguese, which remain
unparalleled in English poetry as the only extended as
well as the choicest expression of a woman's love. It is of
interest to remember that these burning poems, with their
abandon to the exaltation of love as to the lover's over-
whelming sense of her own unworthiness, were written
during the days of courtship, but not shown to their sub-
ject. Browning, until after the lovers' marriage, nor pub-
lished until years later. Take the sonnet, "How do I love
thee ?" or "If thou must love me, let it be for nought,"
and we must go back to Sappho of Mytilene for the con-
fession by a woman of a woman's love of equal fervor and
poetic beauty. Mrs. Browning's love made her otherwise
lyrically vocal, as a dozen beautiful poems, "Life and
Love," "Change upon Change," "A Denial," and other
lyrics show. But in Sonnets from the Portuguese she
reached in the passion which they chronicle alike the
height of fervid poetical spirit and the fulfilment of her
delicate womanhood.
We have already noted other poets of her sex, Mrs.
Browning's earlier contemporaries. Fanny Kemble, the
accomplished actress and a most precocious dramatist,
wrote much verse, some lyrical, the latest volume dating
1883. The two grand-daughters of Richard Brinsley
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 209
Sheridan, afterwards respectively Lady Dufferin and
Caroline Norton (Meredith's Diana) also left each a lyric
or two that claim a place in our anthologies. While that
rare spirit, Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, in
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, 1846, reaches in-
spiration in more than one of her contributions, espe-
cially in the noble, dauntless poem entitled "Last Lines."
No coward soul is mine.
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine.
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
Though earth and man were gone.
And suns and universes ceased to be.
And thou were left alone.
Every existence would exist in thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou — Thou art Being and Breath,
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
None of the younger contemporaries of their own sex (if
we except Christina Ilossctti, of whom more below),
approximated any such poeli(;aI heights as those of Mrs.
Browning. George Eliot wrote no small amount of verse;
it deserves attention mainly because she was a great
novelist. Dinah Maria Craik is mcmora})lc for one charm-
ing domestic poem, "Philip, my king"; Adelaide Anne
Procter, daughter of Barry Cornwall, for another, "The
Lost Chord." It was the latter who shared with Jean
Ingelow the highest popularity of any poet of her sex in
210 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the late forties and fifties, and the popularity of both was
based largely on their pleasing lyrics. Jean Ingelow is the
better poet. Both gain by judicious sifting out of the
temporary, the sentimental, and the insignificant. To pass
many lesser names, a poet of finer quality and greater
power than these, and even now too little known, was
Augusta Webster, whose several volumes appeared be-
tween 1860 and 1887, seven years prior to her death. A
dramatic rather than a lyrical quality is characteristic of
Mrs. Webster's work, and this outside of her poems in
accepted dramatic form, such as Portraits. None the less a
strong lyrical spirit pervades A Woman Sold and Other
Poems, 1865, and later volumes ; witness the three stanzas
entitled " Not to be," and such little pieces as the " English
Stornelli " which combine the brevity, the feeling, and the
unity of the best lyrical art.
The attraction of several names to our word of Mrs.
Browning and the extended careers of Tennyson and
Browning, reaching from the thirties to the close of the
eighties and a little beyond, have carried us well forward
of much in poetry that belongs to the earlier Victorian
years; but even the earliest were full of minor song, and
the anthologies preserve for us, among many others, the
names of John Sterling, immortalized biographically by
Carlyle; of Richard Chenevix Trench, last Anglican arch-
bishop in Dublin and a Wordsworthian, chaste in diction,
unaffected in piety; the accomplished and many-sided
Lord Houghton; and the distinguished physician, devoted
friend of Rossetti, Thomas Gordon Hake. In Scotland,
THE \1CT0RL\N LYRISTS 211
too, Professor Blackie began writing in these years, a
lyrist, light, fluent, and patriotic; and there was likewise
the graver and more philosophical genius of William Bell
Scott, a painter, as a poet, of note. Alfred Domett,
Browning's "Waring," took a precocious poetical reputa-
tion away with him to New Zealand; and Sir Samuel
Ferguson, author of the epic poem, Congal, raised among
his admiring fellow-countrymen the question whether he
was Ireland's long sought "national bard," or only an
honorable equal of Mangan, who is at least lyrically far
his superior, or the younger Aubrey de Vere who, begin-
ning a Wordsworthian as far back as 1842 and "wavering
between English, Irish, and Catholic tradition," as Mr.
Yeats puts it, essayed poetry in many forms and suc-
ceeded in several.^ There is often a fine heroic note in the
poetry of Ferguson, and he has caught the mystical fatal-
ism of his nation's belief in fairy-lore, if not quite its sus-
taining music, in "The Fairy Well of Lagnanay" for
example. In the symbolism of such a poem as "The Little
Black Rose," de Vere justifies his nationality, as in the
song, "She says: 'Poor friend, you waste a treasure'"
and other true lyrics, he claims a place in the larger realm
of English song. In estimating his country's poets, Mr.
Yeats has placed Mangan above Ferguson and Ferguson
above Thomas Davis, finding in the last, as a ref)resenta-
tivc of the poetry of "Young Ireland," an interference of
patriotism and cnlhusia.sm with their art as poets, yet
' Sce"MocJ(Tn Iri.sli Poetry " an<l " I'oclry and Tnulilion." TW/rc/rrf
WorkJi of «'. n. Yrntx, 1908. vili.
212 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
granting Davis "much tenderness" in the simple lyric of
love. Possibly it is in no one of these but in William
Allingham that we are to seek the beginnings of the Irish
Celtic revival that forms so interesting and well-heralded
a "movement" of our own literary present. Allingham had
an inborn lyrical gift, and even if, as Mr. Yeats says, "he
sang Ballyshannon [his native village] and not Ireland,"
his very idyllic narrowness made him the truer representa-
tive of the national spirit in certain of its aspects. Like
Herrick, in a very different manner, Allingham is a poet
of little things and of the inspiration of little things. Mr.
Yeats quotes from him these simple lines as an example of
"one of the rare moments of quaint inspiration that came
to him in recent years " :
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring.
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years —
To remember with tears!
If Allingham sang of little things, Coventry Patmore
was certain, with what his friends might have called the
divine vanity of genius, that he sang of the greatest of all
things, the love of man for woman, and that in a guise not
hitherto attempted. Patmore is the laureate of wedded
love, which he celebrated in The Angel in the House, 1852-
1863, with a devotion, a facility, and a completeness —
even though his first stupendous plan remained unfulfilled
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 213
— unequalled in the history of poetry. Patmore had begun
imitatively, first under the influence of Mrs. Browning,
secondly under that of Tennyson, as early as 1844; and in
later years he achieved greater poetry, if a less repute, in a
couple of volumes, Odes and The Unknown Eros, in which
love is still his universal theme, though now transmuted
into a symbolical, not to say an apocalyptical, reference
to the deepest mysteries of religion. It has been claimed
for Patmore that he created a new species of erotic poetry;
and the purity, the sincerity, and the independence of his
lyrical psychology is not for a moment to be questioned.
Patmore, although a friend of the young pre-Raphaelites
and a contributor to The Germ, is assuredly "a solitary
specimen of an unrelated species," a man temperamentally
lyrical, who strove assiduously to write poetry didactic,
gnomic, and philosophical.' When Tennyson and the
pre-Raphaclitcs were teaching the world a new, elaborate,
and intricate prosody, Patmore adhered with undeviating
devotion to a stanza derived from old balladry which,
despite much intervening study and discussion by him
of verse and metrical effect, was varied in his later poetry
only by a facile and musical adajjtation of the irregular
structure of the Odes of Cowley, wlierein the phrase is the
line and the variation is dependent on the thought and on
no preconceived stanzaic arrangement. Notwillistandiiig
this and des{)ite his tenuity, his insistence on the trivial
and his banality even at times, Patmore is a poet to be
' Sec the interesting life by K. (Jossc in Literary Liven, 1U05, where
this thesis is successfully set forth.
214 TIIE ENGLISH LYRIC
reckoned with. It may not have been the best that was in
him that sold a quarter of a miUion copies of The Angel
in the House ; and the subsequent neglect of him by the
public and even by those who had been his friends may
be referable to other causes than the estrangement due to
his reception into the communion of Rome; still there
remains an independent, passionate, and tender lyrical
spirit in him which, combined with a metrical facility,
unparalleled save perhaps in George Wither, will re-
tain for the Patmore of "The Azaleas," "The Toys,"
or "Amelia" — to mention only these — a singular and
honorable place in Victorian lyrical song.
And now, as in the brave Elizabethan days, the gift of
song spread more and more abroad, though often the
lyric remained the occasional by-product of a poet de-
voted to other forms of verse; as, for example, in the case
of Thomas Edward Brown, the Manx laureate, an excel-
lent poet. Sir Edwin Arnold, author of the epic The Light
of Asia, Lord Lytton, imitative, eclectic, and second class,
or Lewis Morris, the Welshman, who was equally popu-
lar with these two latter as he was equally narrative and
second rate. Among less popular poets who began to
write far earlier than any of these was William Cox
Bennet, the author of some charming domestic songs, and
Francis Turner Palgrave, less memorable for his own
scholarly verses than for his selection, with the powerful
aid of Tennyson, of the poetry constituting the famous
anthology, The Golden Treasury of English Songs and
Lyrics. Men great in other walks of literature left lyrics
THE VICTORUN LYRISTS 215
behind them, Ruskin's verses, descriptive and Byronic,
were written in his youth and are not distinguished; Car-
lyle's are terse, pregnant in thought, unmusical, not quite
poetical. Thackeray was a generous and happy con-
tributor to vers de socieie and humorous verse; there are
jingles in Dickens; Kingsley's poetry is built upon the
universal emotions, ringing true and tuneful. There were
the possibilities of a great poet in Charles Kingsley, and
it is amazing that he should have retained his singing
voice in lyrics such as "Oh that we two were maying,"
"The Sands of Dee." and "The Three Fishers," in a life
of such incessant activities remote from poetry. Varied
was the mid-Victorian lyrical chorus, now voicing the
national spirit of the moment (the Crimean War) in the
war of poetry of unequal, "spasmodic" Dobell and sound
and English-hearted Gerald Massey, both of them of
copious lyrical and non-lyrical industry on other topics;
now ai)})Iied to i>olilical propaganda as in the Songs of
Democracy of Ernest Charles Jones, or the satirical Songs
of the Governing Classes by Robert Brough; now turned
with William Brighty Rands, who modestly lost himself
in three or four pseudonyms, to wise and dainty nonsense
verses to stand beside those of Carroll, (jilbert, and Steven-
son, a joy to children and their elders. There is a pathos
in .such a poem as "Louise on the Door-Step," by the
popular journalist ('harlcs ALickay, that is worthy of
Ilood; there is rhapsodic weirdness in "^Vhen the world is
burning," by Ebenezer Jones, defeated in I he struggle for
health, life, and art; as there is a natural cry, among all
216 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the churchly leadings and agnostic throes of the times,
in these lines of the classical master of Eton, William
Cory:
You promise heavens free from strife.
Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
But sweet, sweet is this human Hfe,
So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;
Your chilly stars I can forego.
This warm kind world is all I know.
You say there is no substance here.
One great reality above:
Back from that void I shrink in fear.
And childlike hide myself in love:
Show me what angels feel. Till then,
I cling, a mere weak man, to men.
An independent spirit moves in the interesting poetry of
Robert Leigh ton, a busy man of affairs; and in the devo-
tional, as in the secular lyrics of the novelist, George
Macdonald, there rules a sweet wholcsomeness and moral
earnestness not unrelieved by delicate fancy. William
James Linton, notable during a long life for his agitation
of radical and republican ideas, for his skill as an engraver
on wood, and a bibliophile and printer of rare books, went
back to the spirit of Catullus, Campion, and Herrick in
his charmingly finished lyrics of "Love-lore"; Walter
Thornbury revived the life of later old days in his Songs
of the Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1857; and Joseph Skipsey
showed an unexpected kinship with the genius of Blake
in his "power of making simple things seem strange and
strange things simple." Even the politer poets of vers de
THE \1CT0RIAN LYRISTS 217
socieie do not often better the condensation and point
attained at times by Skipsey, who literally came up out
of the coal-pits. As to these politer poets, Frederick
Locker-Lampson, with a host of others, Mortimer Collins,
Charles Stuart Calverley and H. S. Leigh (with the admir-
able satirical and nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll and
William S. Gilbert), carried forward the genre and its
like from Praed and Lord Houghton to Dobson and
Stephen.
Though neither Tennyson nor Browning can be de-
scribed in any narrow sense as devotional, far less as theo-
logical poets, a religious tone was strong from the first in
the poetry of both; it waxed stronger and more clearly
defined when the times came to be rent with the religious
excitement of the thirties and forties. The Oxford or
Tractarian Movement, as it is usually designated, con-
cerns us in this book only in so far as it is responsible for
the song that it inspired in its immediate effects and in
its reaction. This movement in the Church of England
appears to have arisen as a protest against the utilitarian-
ism, the rationalism and spirit of inquiry which had begun
to manifest itself toward the beginning of the second
quarter of the century, and, twenty years later, was hurry-
ing even the church into new and troubled waters. The
Oxford Movement, we are informed, was "the direct
result of the scarchings of heart and the communings for
seven years, from 1820 to 1833, of Kcble, Iliirrell Froude,
and Newman. . . . Keble had given the insi)iralion,
Froude had given the imi)etus, then Newman took up
218 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the work"; and this work consisted in the attempted
revival of a questionless faith, an observation of form
and ceremonial, and the cultivation of a religious fervor
of heart which can only be described as mediaeval.^ The
first of the famous Tracts jor the Times, the work of New-
man and other men, appeared in September, 1833, and the
movement was continued by this means, and especially
by Newman's eloquent and persuasive sermons. New-
man's arguments had been for the via media; but the
"middle way" turned more and more towards the high-
way of Rome; and when at last he maintained in the
notorious "Tract XC," in 1841, that the thirty-nine
articles — that corner stone of the English Church —
" were not opposed to Catholic teaching and only partially
to Roman dogma, that the real opposition is merely to
the dominant errors of Rome," the crisis was reached and
his leadership was at an end. The Oxford Movement
was dead, in 1845, with Newman's admission into the
communion of Rome; but its consequences on English
thought and English literature long continued. This is
not the place in which to pursue a subject which belongs
to a sphere much wnder. Neither the pellucid prose of the
author of the Apologia nor the unconscious sophistry of
his dialectic and ingenious mind (call them "the severity
of his logic," if that is preferred) is here our concern.
Nor is it our business to question the sincerity of a man
who paid much for the courage of his religious convictions,
whatever were his rewards. The poetry of Keble, the
' See Hugh Walker in his Victorian Literature, 1910, pp. Ill £f.
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 219
better part of which was prior to the "movement," has
already found mention in its place. Its simple churchli-
ness and faint Wordsworth ianism are little touched by-
religious or other turmoil or debate. Its uniform level of
modest literary excellence explains its enormous popu-
larity vnih the godly and the unpoetic. The present writer
feels otherwise concerning the slender volume of Cardinal
Newman's verse. For while little of it is poetry in any
exalted or imaginative sense, there is in it the same fine
feeling for the phrase, for thought buoyed up by language
at once choice and fitting, that we find in Newman's in-
comparable prose. Newman's poetry has none of the
religious conventionality of Keble's. His is the freer,
nobler utterance of a heart equally sincere and of a writer
immeasurably Keble's superior. "Lead, kindly Light,"
written as far back as 1833, and called by the author "The
Pillar of the Cloud," is only the best among many beauti-
ful devotional poems. "Ilora Novissiraa," to name only
one other lyric, should be contrasted with Matthew Ar-
nold's poem, "A Wish," if we would know in its extremes
how the Oxford Movement divided the hearts and hopes
of men. If there is a fine nobility in the hard-eyed sto-
icism of agnostic courage, there is assuredly as touching
a beauty in the devout submission of unquestioning
faith to death assuaged })y the consolations of Christian
ministration.
Save for Newman and Keble, the Oxford Movement
inspired no other poet of note. Strange that reactionary
faith should have been so silent with rationalistic doubt
220 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
soon to become so vocal: and this the more when we
recognize that the heart of the reaction was, after all,
aesthetic and a protest against the inroads of rationalism
on hallowed if conventional ideals of life. The ninety
Tracts for the Times offered a petty stop-gap to the on-
rushing tide of liberal thought. Essentially conservative
and conventional Tennyson was wrought to the devising
of a species of poetical via media wherein the theory of
evolution and English orthodoxy were yoked uncomfort-
ably to step the way of progress together. Browning, who
is as conspicuous for his anti-ecclesiastical attitude as he
is for his optimistic faith in God, set forth the strongest
plea of modern times for a rationalized view of life, con-
duct, and human obligations, for the exercise of individual
freedom and obedience to the divine promptings of rebel-
lion where rebellion must inevitably arise against outworn
conventions. But it was younger men who felt to the full
the immediate reaction against the defeated "attempt to
revive in the church of England the claims of primitive
Christianity and bind her to traditions." Arthur Hugh
Clough and Matthew Arnold have been variously called
the poets of rationalism, of agnosticism, or of doubt. The
latter are better terms than the first; for neither poet
shared in the Berserker rage of Carlyle, that mighty
breaker of images, but mourned over the fragments of
the fallen idols, hesitant and nonplussed as to whether,
after all, it were not better they had remained in their
hallowed niches. It is this that makes the two poets of
doubt so thoroughly representative of a salient charac-
THE VICTORLIN LYRISTS 221
teristic of the century Just completed. For if we look over
that century at large, we find its spirit marked by several
momentous changes. The contented acquiescence in
things as they are, pervaded by a strong moral sense and
love of man in society which characterized the eighteenth
century, was disturbed by the awakening of the feeling
for nature, by rebellion against convention, by romantic
spirit, enthusiasm, in weaker natures sentimentalism and
despair. This was followed by the hush that preceded the
coming of Tennyson and Browning, during which Car-
lyle carried forward the earlier enthusiasm, now turned
sceptical and iconoclastic, into the broader transcendent-
alism represented by Emerson in philosophy, George
Eliot in fiction, and Ruskin in art. Meanwhile the ration-
alistic note was sounding ever more and more insistently,
the effect of the spirit of scientific inquiry that produced
such men as Darwin, Huxley, Mill, and Tyndall; and
this in turn brought about the reactionary Oxford Move-
ment of which we have just heard; and in the war of con-
tending tendencies wrought such men as Newman, Kings-
ley, Dr. Thomas Arnold, Maurice, and in a still younger
generation, Clougli and Matthew Arnold. If the s[)irit
of our own late time, the age of Victoria, be studied for
the larger inherent qualifies that made it what it was, we
must recognize incvila})ly among them its intollectualily,
its separation of the man from his opinions, its doubt,
and its faith. This new faith is one that is larger than that
of creeds and dogmas; it is faith in Ihc salvation that is to
come to mankind in unswerving fidelity to truth. Vic-
222 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
torian doubt, too, was not so much unbelief as half -belief,
question, pause, lest we be led blindly on and trust to
guidance where there is none. Least of all is the doubt
of men like Clough and Arnold to be interpreted into that
cheap scepticism that wraps itself in the cloak of its own
cleverness and questions both motive and evidence be-
cause it knows that all is not true within. Keble used to
say of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the poet's father, that it was
"better to have Arnold's doubts than another man's cer-
tainties"; and Tennyson's well-known lines about more
faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds echoes the
same thought.
Arthur Hugh Clough was born in 1819, three years
before Arnold. Both were educated at Rugby under the
powerful personality of Dr. Thomas Arnold, who has been
described as the exponent of liberalism, moral and intel-
lectual, a man who left a deeper impression on his time
through his pupils than almost any teacher. Dr. Arnold
was always a force counter to the Oxford Movement; and
his appointment, in 1842, to the Regius professorship of
history at Oxford marked the definite defeat of the reac-
tionaries. Thus in their studentship the two young poets
were caught in the vortex, so to speak, of these conflicting
waves of opinion. It was more than the liberality of Dr.
Arnold (or the looseness of his opinions to him who will
have it so) that unsettled such minds. It required like-
wise the recoil that came with the contemplation of what
must have seemed most vividly to such men a return to
the empty formalism of a justly forgotten past. This it
THE ^^CTORL\N LYRISTS 223
was that made these two poets so supereminently repre-
sentative of this central struggle of the age. If Arnold
represents the intellectual side of these times of doubt
and debate, C lough represents their emotional features.
Clough was less self-centred, less eager to do battle, more
puzzled as to which way to advance, though none the less
unshaken in his belief in the final conquest of truth. Yet
it was Clough who sacrificed his fellowship, and with it
all that he loved at Oxford, to Carlyle's appeal that we
admit no insincerities into our lives. Equally character-
istic of Clough was it that he should subsequently have
exclaimed: "Carlyle led us out into the wilderness and
left us there."
Neither Clough nor Arnold distinguished himself at
college, though each later attained a fellowship. The
several minor educational posts that Clough held and
Arnold's inspectorship of schools, in which he spent his
life, seem sufficiently incongruous occupations for men of
such temprT. But these things, however faithfully per-
formed, were the avocations of their lives; literature was
their vocation. The earliest of dough's volumes. The
Bothie nf Tobcr-iin-Vuolirli, bears date 1848, though he
had written earlier poetry than this. Arnold followed
with the publication of The Strayed Reveller and Other
Poems in the next year. He, too, had begun earlier with
prizes for ver.se at Rugby and Oxford; and he gave over
the writing of poetry about 1870 to become the most
consummate and finished literary critic of his age.
Clough died prematurely in 1801, his work uncompleted;
224 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Arnold lived on to 1888, professor of poetry for ten years
at Oxford, and exerting a powerful influence that has not
yet failed by his sound and brilliant literary and other
criticism.
The poetry of Clough is more distinctively individual,
more fully the expression of the poet's inner self than that
of any other poet easily to be named since Wordsworth.
Clough is passionate, never mystical, direct and even
practical at times; his thought is often concentrated, and
sometimes it clogs and impedes its own solution from his
very fullness of utterance. He is not a master of conven-
tional poetical form like Arnold; music, metres, and the
gauds and ornaments of verse are nothing to him save
where such things must enter vitally into the poetic
thought. He chose the dactylic hexameter — a most un-
English measure — for two of his longer poems, and he
managed it in a rambling and uneven manner, though it
must be confessed not without a certain congruency with
his uneven, rambling subject-matter. In full recognition
of the merits of these longer poems and the more ambi-
tious Dipsychus, a problematically successful adaptation
of the Faust-motif to our own late times, Clough seems
to the present writer happier in his shorter lyrical poems,
where he obtains a concentration and a semblance of
unity not his elsewhere. In lyrics such as the ever-popu-
lar "Qua Cursum Ventus," "The Hidden Love," "Say
not the struggle naught availeth," we have the thought-
ful, ruminating spirit fraught with spiritual feeling that
declares Clough a Wordsworthian indeed, but with a dis-
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 225
tinctive originality of his own. There are few poems, for
example, more significant of their author and of the spirit
of his time than the lines entitled "The Music of the
World and of the Soul," beginning:
Why should I say I see the things I see not ?
WTiy be and be not ?
Show love for that I love not, and fear for what I fear not ?
And dance about to music that I hear not ?
Who standeth still i' the street
Shall be hustled and justled about ;
And he that stops i' the dance shall be spurned by the dancers*^
feet.
• J •.
Are there not, then, two musics unto men ? —
One loud and bold and coarse.
And overpowering still perforce
AU tone and tune beside ;
The other, soft and low.
Stealing whence we not know.
Painfully heard, and ea.sily forgot.
With i)au.sc.s oft and many a silciicc strange
(And silent oft it seems, when silent il is not).
But listen, listen, listen, — if haply l>e heard it may;
Listen, listen, listen, — is it not sounding now ?
The poetry of Matthew Arnold was the work of his
youth, as we have seen. Tliyrais, his beautiful elegiac
tribute to his dead friend, Clough, appeared in 18G0, five
years after the hitter's death; and in the following year,
Arnold published the lust of his several volumes of |)oelry.
Exee|)t for the noble drama, Kniprdoclcs, though it has
practically no motion, and a small gnjup of narrative
226 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
pieces, conspicuous among them the blank-verse poems,
"Sohrab and Rustum" and "Balder Dead," an elegiac
character pervades all that Arnold has written in verse.
And the early poems which contained a group of fine son-
nets, "The Forsaken Merman," "Resignation," "Youth's
Agitation," and "The Gipsy Child," struck the note and
determined the range of the poet's art which he was
scarcely to amplify in his later work. With Empedo-
cles, in 1852, appeared the two series of lyrics later
known under the titles, "Switzerland," and "Faded
Leaves"; and here fall "Dover Beach," "A Summer
Night," "A Wish," and many another lyric — for they
are truly such — wherein speaks the stoical regret of
the poetry of doubt. More elaborately elegiac are the
touching and eloquent poems "Rugby Chapel," "The
Scholar Gipsy," once more reminiscent of Clough,
"Heine's Grave," the "Stanzas from the Grand Chart-
reuse," and those to the memory of "Obermann."
The poetry of Arnold marks not only a revolt against
medisevalism in religion and thought but also a revulsion
against that decorative medisevalism in poetry and art
that, beginning among the earlier romanticists, ruled
variously in the poetry of Keats, Tennyson, and the
authors constituting what was later known as the pre-
Raphaelite school. Rationalistic and even agnostic as
Arnold was in his attitude towards established religion,
his artistic faith went back to the ancients, finding in their
calm and certain art that "consolation and stay " denied
the conscientious artist amid the babel, the indecision.
THE VICTORIAN LYBISTS 227
and the bizarre distortions of modern art. Arnold thus
became, in his theories about literature as in his practice
of poetry and prose, the exponent of classicism and
classic ideals; although, as to immediate English poetic
influences upon him, he, like Clough, was one of the latest
of the disciples of the Wordsworthian cult of nature and
did not wholly escape that subjective revealment which is
characteristic of our modern time. There is, in conse-
quence of his classicism of ideal, however, a restraint
about Arnold's poetry, a fastidiousness that is unlike any
other English poet of notable rank unless we go back to
Thomas Gray. Arnold's finish is only exceeded by that of
Tennyson himself, nnd his taste was even more rigorous
and exacting. The characteristics, in a word, of Arnold's
poetry are its atmosphere of culture, its spiritual freedom,
and its classical restraint. He shrank from the display
of subjective feeling, however he may have fallen into it
at times, and found something essentially vulgar in poet-
ical or other wearing of one's heart on one's sleeve.
Byronism, Wcrthcrism, with the whole sentimental school,
were abhorrent to him as the tinsel and barbaric jewelry
of inferior romantic art; and his style, his diction, and his
verse are chaste and simple as his thought is habitually
noble and self-poised. Arnold at his l)est is always natural,
pure, dignified, and strong. He has the classic repose and
sense of design; he possesses the classical clearness and
stoical temper. And if he be wanting in passion of the
heart (as his "Tristram and Iseult" snflicicnily atfcsls),
he has abundantly that elegiac passion of the mind, that
228 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
troubled doubt of self, of the world, of heaven itself, that
distinguished the thinking men of his time. This it is
that gives to the poetry of Arnold a quality of enduring
interest above the possibilities of mere art for art's sake
or mere ethical and religious impressionism however
fervid and exalted.
Romanticism has been, now for more than a century,
a word to conjure with, vague and undefined as its bounds
remain. And it is obvious that within this ample limbo
of ideas many diverse things are readily comprehended.
The poetry of Scott, even that of Byron, was often pic-
turesque and sentimental; it was likewise rhetorical and
superficial from an imperfect sympathy at times with the
subject in hand or for other reasons. In a word, in its
earlier manifestations, the romantic impulse in England
had not shaken itself free from the conventional spirit
of the previous age. It was but a half -revolt; the absolute
rebels were Shelley and Keats, and the way had been
pointed them by Coleridge. Theirs was a finer spirit,
more eager was their pursuit of abstract beauty. Their
poetry was sensuous rather than sentimental, impatient
of restraint, intensely subjective and yet objectively
minute in its expression of detail. Above all, it is charac-
terized by a high seriousness that is as distant from the
flippancy of Byron as it is distinguishable from the didac-
tic gravity of Wordsworth. This newer and choicer
romanticism was the basis of the Tennysonian art, how-
ever the laureate conventionalized it. It was likewise the
stock, with Keats as the intermediary, out of which
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 229
sprang the poetry of the group known as the pre-Raphael-
ite writers together with much that has come after.
The term pre-Raphaelite is unhappy, however em-
ployed. It was the self-assumed designation of the little
brotherhood of painters that formed about Holman Hunt,
John Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in protest against
the cult of Raphael that marked the academic painters
of the forties; and it was employed to designate their art
and that of many others who were thought in some wise
to resemble them. The term was also transferred to liter-
ature owing chiefly to Rossetti's distinction in poetry,
and has been extended to include William Morris and
Algernon Charles Swinburne, not here to mention many
lesser names. The late Mr. William Sharp, earliest
chronicler of the cult and late follower in its wake, finds
"between the works of the band of artists who preceded
Raphael and those who were called after them in the
nineteenth century ... no real resemblance; the only
bond that united them being that of going directly to
nature for inspiration and guide."' Certain it is that the
brotherhood made a compact "to adopt a style of abso-
lute independence as to art dogma and convention"; and
that in so doing, where nature failed — as she seems not
infrequently to have failed them — the brethren trusted,
as Rossetti himself i)uf it, each to his "own intelligence."''
A certain definition of outline and richness of color has
been posited, too, for the pre-Ilai)haelite jiainters, qujili-
' Dante Galjriel Roa.ielli. a Rrmrd and a Study, 1883.
* K. L. Cary, The Rosudlis, 1000, p. 3.*}.
230 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
ties transferable and distinguishable in pre-Raphaelite
poetry as well. This art possesses undeniable originality,
but it is less that compassed by an unaffected return to
nature than the strangeness and other-worldliness that
results from a deliberate recurrence to mediaeval models
and a reincarnation, so to speak, of mediajval ideals. In
a word, the pre-Raphaelite poetry and art was a reaction-
ary movement, a return to an older artistic tradition,
leveled as much, so far as it was militant, against the
rationalizing spirit of our time as against contemporary
artistic creeds. How this paralleled the return to a me-
diaeval ritual which the Oxford movement induced must
be patent to the most superficial observer.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the heart, soul, and flower
of the " movement "; the rest are pre-Raphaelite only in so
far as they partake of his spirit or share in the qualities
that were his. The son of a poet and a patriot, banished
his native Italy as a rebel against tyranny, young Rossetti
early showed his blood in his precocious artistic talent and
his impatience with the restraints of the artist's education
of his time. The formation of the brotherhood, the pub-
lication of that now precious little journal of protest, The
Germ, in 1850, the criticism and attack of it and the noble
and generous defense of the new ideals by Ruskin — all
these things we know, told in a hundred different ways.^
Later came the acquaintance with the Oxford circle, in
which William Morris and Swinburne with their Oxford
1 See especially the Introduction to a new edition of The Germ by
William Michael Rossetti, 1901.
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 231
and Cambridge Magazine, 1857, had headed for Hterature
a similar revolt; then the tragic death of Rossctti's wife,
that deepened his art and his melancholy, sinking him,
towards the close of the twenty years yet left him, into a
wreck of his former self, morbid, fitful, passionate, and
irresponsible.
Rossetti is the most purely lyrical of the poets of his
group and the most untrammelled bj' rule or precedent.
His pictures we are told were painted with much labor and
toil in an incessant struggle for perfection; his poems came
with a far greater spontaneity, from the famous "Blessed
Damosel," written, it is said, when the poet was but
eighteen, to the many ballads, all of them fraught with
lyrical feeling and a strange rare quality of poetic descrip-
tion, and to the passionate, exquisitely wrought sequence
of sonnets. The House of Life. Rossetti is made up in his
poetry of several apparently contradictory elements. His
realism (though seldom the realism of nature) is of the
most uncompromising type and distinguished by a cer-
tain rigidity, not to call it severity. On the other hand,
his ideality carries him into the most visionary of themes,
betraying itself in sfjiriluulily and even mysticism. Mr.
Pater has comijared Rossetti to his namesake Danl(\
discovering in him the same "definition of outline," the
same "care for minute and definite imagery," and a like
intensely concrete power of poetic particularization. After
enumerating two distinct functions of poetry, the reveal-
ing to every eye "the ideal aspects of common things"
and "the imaginative creation u[ things that arc ideal
232 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
from their very birth," the critic concludes: "Rossetti did
something excellent of the former kind; but his character-
istic, his really revealing work, lay in adding to poetry a
fresh poetic material of a new order of phenomena in the
creation of a new ideal."^ That this ideal was wholly a
healthy one has been questioned again and again. Bu-
chanan's notoriously unlucky attack on Rossetti's poetry
as "fleshly," retracted, as it was, fully and nobly, if almost
too late, may be dismissed with the regret that it still
afiPects critical estimates of the greatest of the pre-Raphael-
ites.^ There is, however, none the less, an excess of feeling
over governing thought in Rossetti's poetry, a material-
ism at times almost gross, in the passionate symbolism
which the poet employs to figure forth the surging tide
of the lover's emotion (in The House oj Life, for example),
that can be paralleled only in the similar sensuous imagery
which mars, to a chaster northern taste, the adoration of
certain Romanist poets in their poetic cult of the Virgin.^
Notwithstanding, if we except Shakespeare, there is no
such sequence of sonnets as Rossetti's House of Life, with
their choice, rich diction, their weight of fervid passion,
and their perfect poetic execution. Wordsworth, Keats,
^ See the essay prefixed to the selections from Rossetti in Ward's
English Poets, iv, 633.
'^ "The Fleshly School of Poetry "was published as "by Thomas
Maitland," in the Contemporary Review, October, 1871. See A Look
Round Literature, 1877, for a complete recantation, and the noble
"Lines to an Old Enemy."
' See the poetry of Crashaw and the volumes Carmina Mariana, ed.
O. Shipley, three vols., 1894, 1902, passim.
THE MCTORIAN LYRISTS 233
and others achieve distinction in individual sonnets;
there is no other collection of modern times sustained at
so high and so impassioned a poetic level. However
intellectuality must be denied to Rossetti, and however
far he is from the poetry of purpose that bids fair to
relegate the divine art to the place of an humble hand-
maiden of "sociology'," we may agree with Mr. Watts-
Dunton that the poetry of Rossetti is charged with
"an ever-present apprehension of the spiritual world and
of the struggle of the soul with earthly conditions." ' It
is this, with his aloofness from contemporary interests,
his poetic intensity, his rigid sense of form, and his quaint
romantic spirit — a spirit never grotesque, however —
that makes Rossetti in the fullest sense the j)oct of the
mcdiaival reaction.
Nor are these latter qualities, though their mode of
expression is different, in any degree wanting in the poetry
of Rossetti's gifted sister Christina Rossetti. Two years
Dante's junior, as definitely and passionately a lover of
art as her brother, she was even more precocious, and had
puiilished verses before those of hers that api)eared in
The Germ. If earthly love, the quintessence of human
passion, rules the poetry of Dante Rossetti, it is heavenly
love, wherein is the renunciation of the world, that fine
asceticism to which the mcdiieval Italian temper was like-
wise equal, that is the heart and soul of the beautiful
poetry of Christina Rossetti. \Vh(;ther her jxx-ms be
• Sec on the whole topic T. Walts-Dunton's well-known essay on
Rossetti in the Encyclopardia Britannica.
234 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
denominated sacred or secular, the spirit that looks out
beyond the grave, that annihilates time and space, that
broods much on life and death, interpenetrating the
thought of one with the other — this is the spirit that
rules her. It is the spirit of "We buried her among the
flowers," "When I am dead, my dearest," and "Too late
for love, too late for joy," exquisite lyrics that only an
exquisite taste could redeem from gloom and morbidity.
It has been well said that Christina Rossctti alone among
the important poets of the reign carried in her "the full-
ness of faith." Hers was not a faith like Cardinal New-
man's, the result of a derationalizing process that fought
its way back against the current of the age to an impreg-
nable mediaeval stronghold; nor yet that of Browning,
optimistic, unreasoning, ingrained, and half a matter of
inheritance. Christina Rossetti's faith — and faith is the
best part of her poetry — like the overtones of a vibrated
string, adjusts all thoughts to the love of God. It is this
together with the sincerity and purity of her art that keeps
her from the morbid, the grotesque, and the despairing.
The only other actual member of the pre-Raphaelite
brotherhood, deserving of memory for this association,
if not quite for his poetry, is Thomas Woolner, the painter.
William Bell Scott, already mentioned, and Sir J. Noel
Paton group here less for the circumstance of any real
association with Rossctti and his circle than for the fortui-
tous accident that both likewise combined the arts of
poetry and painting. There is a metrical freedom about
the verse of Paton, and he has left at least one lyrical sue-
THE VICTORL\N LYRISTS 235
cess in the beautiful song beginning, "There is a wail in
the wind to-night." Unconnected with pre-Raphaelitism
though contemporary with its earlier course, is the poetry
of Sidney Dobell, already mentioned for his war songs,
and that of Alexander Smith, gibbeted together in a
merciless review of Aytoun's as the poets of "the spas-
modic school." The likeness of these poets lies in their
faults, and of these inequality is the chief. Dobell seems
neither to have known when to stop nor how to reject;
and yet there is much of the poet in him. He burns at
times with a genuine martial spirit in England in Time of
War, 1856, a spirit not shared by Smith, who had collabor-
ated with him in Sonnets of the War, in the previous year.
The lyrical "Ballad of Keith of Ravelston," Dobell's best
known poem, deser\'es its poi)ularily, and there are other
poems, "Return," and the fanciful "A Chanted Calen-
dar," for example, that leave him a place, though humbler,
it may be surmi.sed, than ho would have claimed for liim-
sejf among the mid-Victorian lyrists. It has been said that
if Dobell, with his ready emotions, was a belated devotee
of IJyronism, Alexander Smith, Scotchman though he was,
found his iusjjiration in Keats. Smith's poetry is con-
tained in three volumes, published between 18.5.'3 and 18G1.
Like Dolxll, he was enthusiast ically received, only to fall
upon a later neglect. His Citj/ Poems, in which Glasgow
is his inspiration, offer many illustrations of his power of
"description touched with high imagination," and the
lyric, "Barbara," if somewhat strained .uid wordy in
parts, is sustained by a genuine poetic fervor.
236 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
In William Morris, poet, painter, designer in art, printer
and socialist, we meet with one of the most engaging and
interesting personages of Victorian times. Morris was
artistic activity incarnate, and to plan with him was to
attempt instant execution, moulding ways and means into
subjection to the idea which was often realized with a
degree of approximation miraculous to a less practical
and precipitate nature. Morris was fortunate in a child-
hood surrounded with the comfort, protection, and lib-
erality that makes the expansion of a man's real nature
possible. From the first the spirit of medieval romance
ruled in him, touching him not only as it touched some
others at a single point, but in archaeology, architecture,
painting, poetry, everywhere it may be surmised except in
religion; for it has been well said that "it was the religion
of beauty rather than the beauty of any one religion or
creed that appealed to him." ^ With a nature open to all
such impressions, Morris fell in with the "Tennysonian
enthusiasm" that was ruling in the Oxford of his day,
with Ruskin and his writings, and with the pre-Raphaelite
brotherhood. In 1856, Morris and his friends founded
The Oxford and Cambridge Magrazine, destined to run for a
year, and turned first artist and then poet. It was two
years later that The Defence of Guinevere was published.
This remarkable volume is out-and-out pre-Raphaelite,
and in it appeared that part of the poetry of Morris that
most nearly approaches the lyrical. The long and inter-
esting later career of Morris, his stupendous labors and
* A. Noyes, in William. Morris, English Men of Letters, 1908, p. 15.
THE \r[CTORL\N LYRISTS 237
admirable success in translation and epic poetry, the revo-
lution that he effected in the popular applications of decor-
ative art, his fenxnt socialism, prose writings and lectur-
ings on that and on other topics — none of these concern
us. We have just called The Defence of Guinevere out-and-
out pre-Raphaelite; it was such in its picturesque mediae-
valism, in its height of simple coloring, and in the large
part that a certain vivid and naive description bears to
the whole. But even aside from its title and its "doings
with the affairs of King Arthur, " there is in this volume a
reflex of the prevalent influence of a certain very definite
part of Tennyson's poetry. In "Oriana," in "The Lady
of Shalott" even, more especially in the dramatic lyric,
"The Two Sisters," we recognize so distinctively what
we have come to call the pre-Raphaelite note that we are
sur7)rised to find those poems in Tennyson's volume of
1842 with the "Morte d'Arlhur," and "Sir Galahad,"
remembering that The Idijll.s of the King were not com-
plete (barring "Balin and Halan") until the year 1809.
'J'his is the Tennyson that affected Morris; of the larger
elegiac, classical, i)oliti(al, patriotic, and realistic Tenny-
son, Morris shows, neither here nor elsewhere, a trace;
and he develofjcd the wide sweep and incessant onward
progress of the stories of The Karthh/ Paradise, as he
caught the noble si)irit of Norse legend, elsewhere. The
poems of The Defence of Guinevere arc none of them strictly
lyrics, for each is b.'used on a story or situation in which
both narrative and description arc involved: "Shameful
Death" for e.\aini)le, Innv a knight was treacherously
238 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
slain, with his brother's vengeance, told by that brother
years after the deed; "The Sailing of the Sword," how a
lover sailed, only to return recreant with "a tall white
maid" on his knee. And yet here again, in view of the
unity, the music, and the single emotion which animates
such poems and the concentration of this last, not its
representation in the shift and change of action, we have a
lyrical rather than a dramatically pervasive spirit. The
success of such poems consists in their power to suggest
by a flash of description here, a touch of narrative there,
always by way of some picturesque detail, a picture suf-
fused with a strong though objective emotion, usually in
reminiscence of an event afar off. This is impressionist
poetry, and like all impressionist art, in danger of vague-
ness and a lack of definition and significance. To explain
this by reference to some deep spiritual symbolism, as
has been done, is to obscure the understanding. Morris's
poetry is as beautifully and fittingly decorative as his
wall-paper, and as little suffused with mystery. He has
instilled into a fanciful mediaeval milieu, as unreal as that
of Tennyson, suggestions of heroic human passions, more
vivid than Tennyson's and more briefly conveyed, but
in no wise more actual. The later poetry of Morris yields
a few poems more lyrical in the accepted sense. None of
these are more charming than the intercalary "months"
of The Earthly Paradise with their fine sense for nature,
or the amoebsean love song beginning, "In the white-
flowered hawthorn brake," in "Ogier the Dane," in the
same work. Morris might have attained the concentra-
THE \1CT0RL\N LYRISTS 239
tion of the lyric in its narrowest sense. He could do nearly
anything that he attempted. As it is, his real joy was in
the boundless reaches of epic song.
It was in 1857 that Algernon Charles Swinburne came
up to Oxford from Eton to fall into immediate associa-
tion with the Oxonian pre-Raphaelites and to be stirred
equally with them by the powerful influence and example
of Rossetti. The eldest son of an admiral, of ancient and
honorable stock, young Swinburne failed of his degree
at Oxford, although he seems early to have acquired an
extraordinars' facility in foreign languages, French and
Italian as well as Latin and Greek. Indeed, no English
poet has so grasped and appreciated the literary, espe-
cially the poetic, achievements of other men native and
foreign, modern and ancient; and none has ever so em-
ployed that knowledge in \\'idening the range of his own
poetic powers. Verses in Latin, Greek, in modern French
and the language of old Provence, all flowed with equal
readiness from his facile pen; and eloquently worded
criticism in prose, albeit largely ini|)rcssionistic and intui-
tive, was as much his birthright as his surprising mastery
over the musif, the imagery, and the nuiltiple forms of
lyrical and other measures. Of the mode of Swinburne's
life we know very little; his recent death, in 1909, at the
age of seventy-two, still leaves him one of the least
I)ersonally known of our contemporary i)fK*ts. His works
exhibit an extraordinary capacity for fricndshij); or, at
least, for a generous ajjpreciation of the (pialitics of great-
ness among his contemiwrarics. In his early youth he
240 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
visited Landor in Italy; and that venerable poet, Victor
Hugo, and Mazzini (to mention no others) remained
among his adorations, loved scarcely on this side of idola-
try. Indeed, the essence of Swinburne's nature was enthu-
siasm. His was the last triumphant burst of Shelleian
revolutionary song, glorious, impassioned, impracticable,
never-ending song. He is superb in vituperation, in
panegyric often sublime.
A list of the volumes of Swinburne would almost match
that of Tennyson; even though we leave out the prose,
his two or three narrative poems, and his half dozen
dramas, the body of his poetry which is purely lyrical is
to be found in nearly a dozen volumes. Omitting his
earlier work, it was in Aialanta in Calydon, 1865, a tragedy
after the Greek manner, that Swinburne first burst into
fame. Despite his many subsequent triumphs over the
complexities of an elaborate lyrical technique, the poet
never surpassed the music and the poetic beauty of the
famous choruses of this drama which remains the best
known of his works. In the next year appeared the first
series of Poems and Ballads, a volume as unparalleled for
the exuberance and inventiveness of its lyrical effects as
it is frank in its dithyrambic expression of erotic passion.
Whatever may have been the poet's early touch with pre-
Raphaelitism, here he had cut loose once and for all from
precedent and example. Here was a poet whose technique
was a revelation, in comparison to whose absolute sway
over verse Tennyson's perfections seemed tame and
studied, one the impetuosity and torrent of whose pas-
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 241
sionate imagery, like the ocean in the agitation of storm,
left the raptures of Shelley cold as the shimmer of moon-
beams on still water. It is deplorable that to the many,
among them genuine lovers of poetrj', Swinburne has been
too often finally appraised by this one remarkable vol-
ume, often reprinted (in America at least) with a catch
title derived from one of the most characteristic, as it is
one of the most beautiful if vividly erotic, poems of the
book. There is infinitely more than this in Swinburne;
and even in his frankest and most daring moments, he is,
neither here nor elsewhere, decadent. The often hazard-
ous enthusiasm which Swin1)urne lavishes on the love
of man for woman, he bestows in other poems with equal
warmth on his poetical ideals, on the heroes of his personal
worship, on nature, and on the themes of his prose criti-
cism. In Songs before Sunrise, 1871, and Songs of Two
Nations, 1875, two volumes of si)lendid and imperishable
poetry, we have the higliest expression of Swinburne's
political faitii and creed. Always an avowed republican,
he was really less the ui)li<)Idcr of any one form of govern-
ment than a natural rebel against all schemes of consti-
tuted authority. It was this that gave eiiijjlKisis to his
fulminations against kingcraft. It accounts, too, for his
onslaughts on constituted religion and for tiial religion
of Fate that holds the unfathoniabh' background of his
intermittent fjassages between paganism and an oufriglit
negation of (Jod. Having deelarerl that "man's soul is
man's God still," hung like the guiding light of a ship at
the mast's head, he continues,
242 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Save his own soul's light overhead.
None leads him, and none ever led,
Across earth's hidden harbor-bar.
Past youth where shoreward shallows are.
Through age that drives on toward the red
Vast void of sunset hailed from far.
To the equal waters of the dead;
Save his own soul he has no star.
And sinks, except his own soul guide,
Helmless in middle turn of tide.
These are not the idle words of a thoughtless singer of
love-lays, and no one can read them, the bitter invectives
of such poems as "The Watch in the Night" and "Before
a Crucifix," or the eloquence, ideality, and aspiration of
"Hertha," of the "Marching Song" (to mention only
these at random), and remain of any such opinion. Means
and detail were as little to Swinburne as they ever were to
Shelley; the political ideal comprehended in the one vague,
glorious word "freedom" burned in each with a steady
flame, and armed each with a scourge of scorpions for all
that is base, ignoble, tyrannical, and inimical to the innate
manliood of man.
With the second series of Poems and Ballads, 1878, the
enthusiasm of Swinburne takes on not so much a new
phase as a deeper and more fervent appreciation of the
beauty, the mystery, the overmastering influence of
nature. In poems such as "The Forsaken Garden," "A
Wasted Vigil," "Neaptide," "On the Cliffs" (in the next
volume. Songs of the Springtides, 1880), Swinburne takes
his place among the great English lyrists of nature. And
his preoccupation is with the deeper ground tones that
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 243
strike wonder, terror, and worship into the primitive
mythologizing mind. As Mr. Woodberry has put it in a
passage, the whole of which should be read and pondered,
"Fire, air, earth, and water are the four elements from
which his very vocabulary seems made up; flame, wind,
and foam, and all the forms of light are so much a part of
his color-rhythm that they become an opaline of verse
peculiarly his o^vn. . . . The blurring effect of this mass
of indefinable sensation, especially when metaphorically
employed, even more than the overcharge of vocal sound
in the verse, accounts for that impression of vacuity of
meaning that Swinburne's poetry in general makes on
readers not habituated to his manner."' Swinburne's is
the crown of English poetry of the sea. To him the sea is
"the nature-symbol of England" as of liberty, of hope,
and of the life of mankind, and his splendid tunuiltuous
lines, with their incessant dance, sparkle, and break into
foam, seem the very incarnation in poetry of the si)irit
of the wide ocean. One other lyrical enthusiasm of Swin-
burne remains to he chronicled, his love and delicate
unrlcrstanding of childhcMMl. 'i'here are no more Ix'aul il'iil
poems in the language than the thirty odd lyrics entitled
"The Dark Month," aiul []h'. accotni)anying poems,
"A Child's I*ity," "(Comparisons," and the rrst that ap-
pear in the volume entitled Trintrnm of Lj/onrssr. Then'
is about them a greater smoothness, a pur<T serenity, a
more artistic restraint than is the great poet's elsewhere.
* G. E. VVfKMltKTry, Swinbuntr, Conlcmporary Men of Ia^Uctx, New
York. 1905, p. 84.
244 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Still, rather than one of these let us quote, however well
known, a distinctively Swinburnian lyric, one of the few
in which the poet has restricted himself, unless compelled
by the limitations of an exotic verse-form, to the limits
of three stanzas. We omit the second.
For a day and a night love sang to us, played with us.
Folded us round from the dark and the light;
And our hearts were fulfilled of the music he made with us.
Made with our hearts and our lips while he stayed with us.
Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight
For a day and a night.
But his wings will not rest and his feet will not stay for us:
Morning is here in the joy of its might;
With his breath he has sweetened a night and a day for us:
Now let him pass, and the myrtles make way for us;
Love can but last in us here at his height
For a day and a night.
The marvellous virtuosity of Swinburne as a lyrist has
long been a matter of universal recognition, his mastery
over metre, language, imagery, each in its perfection.
Much, too, has been written of his "dangerous facility"
in verse, of his inexhaustible wealth of figure and symbol,
and of that extraordinary power that can bear off lyrical
emotion on steadily onward-rushing pinions in flights that
put to the test — and often disgrace — the most consum-
mate readers of poetry. Condensation and organized
brevity were not among the poetical gifts of Swinburne;
yet he has triumphed again and again in the sonnet and
in the still more restricted limits of the rondel.^ But to
' Cf. A Century of Roundels, 1883; and especially the Sonnets on the
Dramatists.
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 245
deny informing significance to this various, copious, vital,
and opalescent poetry is to misunderstand the poet's
large, passionate, and elemental nature. There is the
poetry of thought, and there is the poetry of feeling. The
first we admire for its craftsmanship, for its hammered
perfection, wrought out on the anvil of the mind, and we
think it deep and important because we recognize the
effort expended upon it. The poetry of feeling, however
artistic in its expression, is not wrought out, but born as
men are bom, the living organic offspring of the parent,
reproducing his features, his nature; and it is inevitably
what it is. Such, although it contain neither name, date,
nor concrete happening, is the most autobiographical of
all poetry; for it reflects the very soul of the poet, and
being the most autobiographical, it is likewise the most
essentially lyrical. We may think ourselves into the sem-
blance of what we are not; the expression of emotion, of
the passion that sways and the enthusiasm tliat leads,
cannot falsify nature. The lyrical poetry of Swinburne is
in a sense more essential poetry than the poetry of Tenny-
son, Browning, or Matthew Arnold, because it is less
sophisticated witli the intellectual processes — be they
artistic restraint, ecccntrie learning, or agnostic ratio(rina-
tion — because it is more undividedly the expression of
the elemental emotions.
There remain a few lesser poets who arc generally
rei)Uted to have sh;ir<<l in tlii- |)re-K;i|)haeIife iiifhienees
of the time, either directly or iiidircctly. Among llnin
are Richard Watson Dixon, Mic friend of Morris, but
246 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
unlike him in both the restraint and the slender volume
of his poetry, and Lord do Tabley, who, writing under
several pseudonyms, reflected in his skilful verse the
influences besides of many masters. More truly followers
of Rossetti and Swinburne were Arthur O'Shaughnessy
and the blind Philip Burke Marston. And to these
may be added the name of Roden Noel and the accom-
plished critic, Frederick Myers. Of these only O'Shaugh-
nessy and Noel find representation in the Oxford Book of
Verse. Noel should live, if for no more, for the sad little
lyric, "They are waiting on the shore"; O'Shaughnessy,
who had the lyrist's music in his veins, for the late pre-
Raphaelite blossom, "I made another garden, yea." The
general influence of Rossetti on succeeding English poets
has been immense, even although the name of pre-
Raphaelite is to be denied to many who came under his
spell. Rossetti is the main conduit of the influence of
Keats to later Victorians. Thus William Sharp, whose
somewhat thin earlier poetry was directly inspired by his
devotion to the dying Rossetti, lived to join, in his later
"other self, Fiona Macleod," the Celtic revival that still
remains a notable feature of our immediate contemporary
times. The affiliations of the late Oscar Wilde, outside of
his plays and his fiction, point inevitably to the aesthetic
movement of which the prose writings and theorizings of
Ruskin, the poetry of the pre-Raphaelites, and the prac-
tical and socialistic applications of William Morris were
all parts. Neither the preposterous egotism and pose of
the man, the brilliant persiflage of his conversation and
THE VICTORL\N LYRISTS 247
dramatic dialogue, nor the appalling tragedy of his life
can shut the eyes of ingenuous criticism to the fact that
the place of ^yilde, in the realm of pure poetry, is a notable
and honorable one. Moreover, ingenious scrutiny wall
find little in his poetry, outside of the distortion of the
motive in the story of Salome, justly to be designated
decadent. Warmth of imagination in the suggestion of
sensuous images there is, somewhat more than in Keats,
decidedly less than in the younger Swinburne or in cer-
tain narrative poems of Marlowe or Shakespeare. On the
other hand, there are few nobler poems of its type than
the address to England, "Ave Imperatrix," few more
tender little threnodies than "Rcquiescat," addressed to
his sister, nor many more touching j)ortrayals of self than
the "Apologia" and the sonnet, "IIcla.s!" It is in some
of his sonnets — " Madonna Mia" or the " Vita Nuova " —
and in his use of certain phrases of refrain that Wilde most
nearly resembles his master Rossetli; his narrative poems,
with their fretjuently happy observance of nature and
their fine swing of conlinuousness overrunning the stanza,
smack more oi his other master Keats whom he adored.
Lastly, it would be difficult to find in the language so
poignant, despairing, so grim and artistically inevitable
a lyrical cry as that of that terrible, wonderful poem
wherein his own abasement, misery, and coiilrition for
crime are universalized into permanent art, "The Ballad
of Reading Gaol."
Among poets not yet named who began to wril<' in
the fifties, three demand mention. Mr. Alfred Austin
248 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
succeeded Tennyson in 1902 as poet laureate of England;
Mr. Austin's political opinions were less open to cavil than
were those of Swinburne. The others are James Thomson,
the poet of The City of Dreadful Night, and George Mere-
dith, the famous novelist, last of the great Victorians to
leave us. Thomson was the son of a sailor who became a
paralytic. The boy was reared in poverty and educated
at the Caledonian Asylum; thereafter he led an irregular
life, passing through a number of positions as teacher in
the army, various clerkships and secretaryships. In early
youth he lost his betrothed, and ill luck, accentuated by
intemperance, seems always to have attended him. He
was an enthusiastic student of Shelley, and from him, with
the help of the friend of his youth, Charles Bradlaugh,
the avowed atheist, Thomson soon fell into the revolu-
tionary and, what was worse, the pessimistic theories
that embittered his life and pervaded his poetry. Though
he published mainly after 1880, his poetry belongs to
some twenty -five years of his life. Thomson died in 1882
" after four terrible weeks of intemperance, homelessness,
and desperation,"^ and his name has been associated once
and for all with the poetry of pessimism and despair.
Limpidity and unaflectedness of diction with a resigned
fatalism, born of a clear sight of things as they are on
those grey and solemn days when the heart forgets hope
and the spring, such are among the notes of Thomson as
he sings:
1 See H. S. Salt, Life of Thomson {"B. V."). 1898, pp. 158 flf.
THE VICTORLVN LYRISTS 249
Weary of erring in this desert life,
Weary of hoping hopes for ever vain.
Weary of struggling in all-sterile strife.
Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain,
I close my eyes and calm my panting breath.
And pray to thee, O ever-quiet Death!
To come and soothe away my bitter pain.
The strong shall strive, — may they be victors crowned;
The wise still seek, — may they at length find truth;
The young still hope, — may purest love be found
To make their age more glorious than their youth.
For me; my brain is weak, my heart is cold,
My hope and faith long dead; my life but bold
In jest and laugh to parry hateful ruth.
In poems such as "To our Ladies of Death," of which
these arc the two opening stanzas, in the terrible "In-
somnia," as in a score of beautiful lyrics, "A Requiem,"
"The fire that filled my heart of old," "Day," "Night,"
will be found a passionate sorrow which is never cynical,
never degenerate, but always imaginatively beautiful and
expressed with the certainty of touch, the unaflPected mas-
tery of style, which is the mark of great poetry. As a
matter of fact there was a happier and more buoyant side
to Thomson's nature, which appears, too, in his poetry, if
only sporadically. Characteristic of this happier mood
is the "idyl" as he called it, "Sunday at IIami)stcad,"
which he offers as "a very Inimblc member of the great
and noble London mob," but in which he has transfigured
the ordinary exj)eriences of a holiday outing by suburban
train and on the common with the touch and the .senti-
ment of i)oetry.
250 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
The poetry of George Meredith began with a volume,
published as early as 1851, when the poet was but twenty-
three years of age; and some six other volumes followed,
the last, A Reading of Life, in 1901. Meredith was thus
precocious as a poet, but fiction soon absorbed him ; and
he was warmly welcomed by judicious criticism from the
first, although the world only returned to his poetry
when his place among the foremost of English novelists
became unassailable. Deeply interesting in itself and for
the suggestion of a possible autobiographical import in
the case of a nature almost as reticent as Shakespeare's,
is Modern Love, 1862, in which is told, in a series of sonnet-
like poems (actually stanzas of sixteen lines), a tragic
story of the estrangement of two souls, essentially noble
but "ever diverse." As a tale of emotion, told not for the
story but for the passion involved. Modern Love is justly
comparable with the lyrical sonnet sequences. The theme
has been described as "a noble spiritual agony, the last
ordeal of that finely tempered clay that will not accept
the senses, except on the terms of the spirit."^ Doubtless
it is all this to the exceptional reader who demands that
poetry "bring him a romantic sense of esoteric posses-
sion." But to most others, despite many noble lines and
incessant flashes of that keen insight that is so distinc-
tively Meredith the novelist's, these poems seem over-
strained, unnatural, and the emotion at times — dare we
avow it? — ignoble. We turn to the author's wholesomer
poetry with a sense of relief. Meredith is a lyrist of extraor-
^ Le Gallienne, Attitudes and Avowala, 1910, p. 234.
THE VICTORL\N LYRISTS 251
dinary originality and of high and serious achievement.
As a young man he often wrote, as in that exquisite song
"Angelic Love," so praised by Charles Kingsley, with a
directness and musical simplicity widely at variance with
his later involved and difficult style. To this simplicity
he has often returned in his latest poetry. What could
be more direct or more poetically significant, for example,
than these lines entitled "Alternation" from A Reading
of Life?
Between the fountain and the rill
I passed, and saw the mighty will
To leap at sky; the careless run.
As earth would lead her little son.
Beneath them throbs an urgent will.
That here is play, and there is war.
I know not which had most to tell
Of whence we spring and what we are.
In Meredith rule with equal sway a subtly intellectualized
feeling for nature, based on a remarkably detailed and
sensitive observation of her ways, and a fine discrimina-
tion of the spiritual significance of such aspects of nature
to man. Moreover, these things rule in Meredith as they
have not ruled an English poet since Wordsworth. But
there arc many divergencies between these two; for
Wordsworth's simple, homely, definite realism that sees
the tilings that all men see but finds a meaning in them
that only the poetical seer can discern, we have in Mere-
dith a wealth and elaboration in detail that often over-
powers and occasionally cloys of its own fullness. In that
exquisite poem, for example, "Love in the Valley," it is
252 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
not nature in any single aspect that warms the lover's
lyrical rapture, but love transfiguring the aspects of all
things, the spring, the winter, flower, bird, leaf, the very
personal defects of the beloved, assuredly an observation
no less true than the simple monotone of any ordinary
love lyric, but one far less capable of treatment within
the bounds of the artistic unity that lyrical poetry de-
mands. In this poem, as in the glorious nature lyric,
"The Woods of Westermain," and elsewhere, Meredith
has triumphed as few have triumphed in the difficult art
of the poetry of pure idea. Indeed, Meredith shares with
Swinburne a power of sustained lyrical flight which is not
always his reader's; as he shares with the same great
lyrist a sensibility delicately attuned to the visible beauty
and glory of external nature, together with a tendency,
at times, to nebulous impressionism that leaves the mind
certain as to the element of beauty, but dubious precisely
as to its significance. These are some of the things that
give to such a poem as "The Lark Ascending," with its
exuberance of imagery, its unmatchable bubble of beauti-
ful words, and its rhapsody of sound, its supreme place
among Meredith's lyrics, and its position, hardly second
to two such different, but equally perfect, poems as those
of Hogg and Shelley addressed to the same poet-inspiring
bird.
Among the poets whose song began in the sixties,
Robert Buchanan demands a word here. Though bom
in England, Buchanan combined with a Scottish aggres-
siveness and confidence in opinion, a bellicosity of spirit
THE VICTORL\N LYRISTS 253
that is usually associated with the less prudent temper of
the Irish Celt. But Buchanan's was likewise a sense
of fairness — some have called it inconsistency — that
caused him to retract generously, as in the case of Ros-
setti, when once he knew himself in the wrong. Chronic-
ally an objector and defiantly independent, Buchanan
was a singularly able and versatile man, writing facilely
essays, criticism, fiction, drama and poetry, narrative,
satirical and lyric. It may be surmised that Buchanan's
animosities and attacks on friend and foe, with his self-
confidence which was often overweening, had much to
do with keeping his reputation, in poetry at least, below
his actual merits during his life. He came up to London,
a mere lad, in 18G0, in the company of a talented young
fellow-poet, David Gray, who died with more promise
than fulfilment a year or so later; and Buchanan cele-
brated his memory in a model biography as well as in
verse. As a poet, Buchanan began with classical subjects
{Undertones, 1865), soon followed by Idyls and Legends of
Inverbum, in which his dramatic power first manifested
itself. But he soon found more congenial subjects in the
dramatic and pathetic realism of his London Poems, 18GG.
Armed with the fierce indignation of the moralist rather
than with the whip of the satirist, there is a virility and
dramatic imaginativeness about such poems, for example,
as "Nell," "Tiger Bay," or "The Dead Mother," that
I)laccs thorn in their melodramatic category beside the
I)oetic pathos of Hood and the inevitable prose fidelity of
Cral)be.
254 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
In his later volumes Buchanan wrote more of the north
country and much in narrative form; but in The Booh of
Orm, 1870, especially, he bore his part, true to his blood,
in the Celtic revival, and displayed a mystic quality
scarcely to have been suspected of so pronounced a realist.
It is impossible here to follow this capable and versatile
writer into the innumerable poetic efforts in which he
reached perhaps only too often merely a qualified success.
Buchanan is always honest, independent and belligerent;
his humor is abundant and he sees straight morally, if not
always artistically. His technique is ready and compet-
ent, it is rarely distinguished; not that he is careless so
much as that his style lacks lift. It has been claimed for
Buchanan that he is peculiarly representative of the later
Victorian spirit. If so, it must be in his attitude of nega-
tion, sustained by an outspoken independence that makes
him habitually the voice of the minority: at times of a
minority of one. It is this that speaks in the interesting
volume The New Rome, wherein he sings — for the spirit
is throughout lyrical — against imperialism, chauvinism,
and Mr. Kipling, against the materialism, banality, and
wickedness of our lives, against our false and convention-
alized God and i)hilosophies of God, and against the cheer-
ful laissez faire of the poet, who
Happy and at home
In all the arts and crafts of learned Rome,
He sees the bloody pageant of despair.
All Nature moaning 'neath its load of care.
Takes off his hat, and with a bow polite
Chirps, "God is in his heaven! The world's all right!"
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 255
All honor to the honest discontent with things as they are
and the bold spirit that prompts the burning lines of
poems like the "Carmen Deific," "The Lords of Bread,"
or the terrible "Sisters of Midnight." Neither the pre-
Raphaelites and their followers with their cult of the
eternal beautiful, much less the lighter virtuosi in
poetry whose business it is, in Buchanan's own words,
"to twang the lyre and strum the banjo, leaving politics
to the thieves and thinking to the philosophers," are
so representative, however they may share in the petty
eddies of the current of the time. Buchanan was a man of
large and varied utterance, keenly alive to the world in
which he lived, syra|)atlietic, moved by human suffering,
too kind for a satirist, too agitated to attain to the crea-
tion of great poetry. It is singular how near the passion-
ate indignation of Buchanan brings him at times to the
political rhapsody of Swinburne. Compare, however,
"The Songs of Em[)ire" with "The Songs before Sunrise,"
and we can feel the difference between zealous and emin-
ently successful eloquence and that inspiration and white
glow of authciilic poetry which the jealous gods of song
grant only to him who is to the poetic manner born.
Indeed it is just this, the question of manner. As we
look back at the poets of the Victorian age we find them
easily divisibh; on the line of form, where difficulties arise
as to more complex distinctions. To put it another way,
we might divide all poets into the two great classes, those
who approach their art by means of the level ways of
truth and, secondly, those who search for the land of their
256 TIIE ENGLISH LYRIC
heart's desire through winding lanes of beauty and en-
chanted vistas, at times along the hedges and trimly
clipped parterres of beauty conventionalized by the all
too careful hand of man. Not to pursue the figure, obvi-
ously the Brownings, Clough, Patmore, and Buchanan,
with many more their inferiors, were more intent on the
thing said than on the manner of saying it; precisely as
Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and the pre-Raphaelites were
more governed by form and those conventions that raise
poetry from a mere outlet for emotion into the practice
of a delicate and subtly difficult fine art. Truth may be
reached through beauty, and beauty by means of truth.
In the higher regions where great poetry abides, the two
are indissolubly united. On the lower slopes are many
who have fallen short either from a neglect of the artistic
or from a neglect of the significant.
Among the lyrical sisters — and they far outnumber
the Muses — the sisters of song, of elegy, of the poetry of
love or the poetry of nature, of joy, sorrow, and the rest,
we have met again and again in this book the lightsome
maid, vers de societe, who is not quite so foreign in ex-
traction as in name, nor altogether given over to trivial-
ity and flirtation. It was in 1873 that the first volume of
Mr. Austin Dobson, Vignettes in Rhyme, appeared; and
it has been followed by several like volumes of his dainty
art in song, as it begot, in its more immediate time, a
number of lesser followers and imitators. Mr. Dobson has
learnt much from his predecessors from Prior to Praed
and Calverley; and he has surpassed them all, at least, in
THE VICTORL\N LYRISTS 257
his technical perfection and in the complete success with
which he reproduces the setting and the atmosphere of
the aristocratic society of the ancien regime and its coun-
terpart — at least, as we imagine it — in eighteenth -cen-
tury England. Ease, self-control, delicacy of touch, and
perfection of finish, all are qualities of the poetry of Mr.
Dobson. His wit is altogether sufficient, his humor well
contained, and he reaches true pathos on occasion. Mock-
ery and light burlesque, too, are his; but no coarseness and
not a trace of pedantry or intrusion of the moralist's dead-
ening purpose. The technical art of Mr. Dobson involves
novelty, less the novelty that invents than the novelty
that revives. It would be too much to say that he was the
first to practise in English the intricate mediceval French
verse forms — the rondel, rondeau, villanelle, triolet, and
ballade — that so took the fancy of the poets and poet-
lings who were young in the seventies and early eighties.
It was the prc-Raphaclitcs who did this; especially Ros-
sctti, with his translation in the original ballade form of
*' De.'i Dames du Temps Jadis," and Swinburne, who pub-
lished rondeaux as early as 1866. The late Mr. Andrew
Lang, who so long ruled among us, a poet among critics,
a critic among the poets, is also to be reckoned with in
these early revivals of French forms, which he handled
with the lightness and precision of an accomplished verse-
man. It is interesting to find Mr. Bridges writing ron-
deaux as early as Mr. Gosse, in 1873; and to have the
latter claim for him the introduction of the triolet into
English, OH Mr. Gosse claims for himself the first English
258 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
villanelle in the next year.* None the less, save for Swin-
burne's tour de Jorce, A Century of Roundels (as he calls
them), Mr. Dobson, more than any one, is responsible
for the popularization in English of the forms just men-
tioned and for triumphs with the difficult chant royal as
well. This is not the place in which to set forth the nice-
ties of the construction of these delicate pieces of French
bric-a-brac. They are pretty and pleasing, and now hap-
pily quite out of the poetic fashion. The late Mr. Henley
often handled them in serious subjects with delicacy and
address. It was not often, however, that they attained
to the dignity of Mr. Dobson's chant royal, "The Dance
of Death," or to the success of some of his renderings of
Horace. Moreover, it is to be remembered that Mr.
Dobson is far too good an artist to have adhered to these
exotic forms of verse as the only medium for his exquisite
art in trifles.
The death of Robert Louis Stevenson in 1894, well be-
fore that of his queen and his immediate fellows in litera-
ture, demands our mention of him here. Stevenson's was
the engaging personality of the vagabond, a wanderer for
health, a writer of various and unquestioned gifts, beloved
and mistrusted, sincere and yet a poseur. His Child's Gar-
den of Verses, 1885, stands alone in its perfect expression
of the child's life from the child's point of view. His other
^ See "A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse," Comhill Magazine,
XXXI, July, 1877, in which the technique of these French forms is ex-
plained. It is fair to Mr. Gosse to .say that his graceful and significant
poetry counts for far more than a happy imitation of the past.
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 259
poetry is, much of it, occasional; but in his later work.
Songs of Travel (written between 1888 and 1894) , the deep-
ening shadows of his approaching and untimely death gave
a greater depth and fervor to his facile and happy powers
of expression in verse. Lucid, direct, and unset with mere
poetic jewels, there is an unwonted charm about Steven-
son's thought and his grace in the use of words that is not
always found in more original and ambitious poetry.
More distinctive is the poetry of the late William Ern-
est Henley, friend and companion of Stevenson. Of the
collected edition of Henley's poetry, first printed in 1898,
five years before his death, the poet says : " Small as is this
book of mine, it is all in the matter of verse that I have
to show for the years between 1872 and 1897. A princi-
pal reason is that, after spending the better part of my
life in the pursuit of poetry, I found myself (about 1877)
so utterly unmarketable that I had to own myself beaten
in art, and addict myself to journalism for the next ten
years. "^ But ultimately "beaten in art" Henley was not,
and his accej)lancc on his reappearance, in 1888, was
instantaneous, and his repute has steadily increased. His
work in poetry began with the extraordinary series of
sketches in verse entitled Iti Hospital, born of his so-
journ of nearly two years in the Old Edinburgh Infirmary.
Here that "passionately observant imagination" of his
has given us pictures the vividness, the truthfulness, the
insight of which, each into its own human mood, must
set at rest the notion that tunefulness is the sole criterion
' ".\dvcrtiscmcnt," Poems, cd. lUOl, p. vii.
260 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
of lyrical poetry. Into the broader life of the metropolis
Henley carried his large sane spirit and poignantly ob-
serving eye, reaching, in London Voluntaries, the height
of this ruling feature of his art. But Henley, like all true
poets, is at heart lyrical. His song is full and untremu-
lous. Life, death, fate, and love are his among the immem-
orial themes: love as the strong man has known it, not
the dreamer or the voluptuary; death as the brave man
faces it, scorning the crutches of outworn faiths and the
palliatives of narcotic romances. The song of Henley
is always dauntless, manly, brave, and strong; he finds
life bitter, and "fell" "the clutch of circumstance," but
none the less he clearly sings :
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.
Above such poems of steadfastness, above the grim
"Madam Life 's a piece of bloom," and the many short
direct lyrics of love, too charged with thought merely
to sing, too burdened with passion to fall into epigram,
I prefer the irregular musical phrases of " Margaritse
Sorori," quoted and praised by Stevenson:
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction.
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night —
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
THE MCTORL\N LYRISTS 261
So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done.
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing.
Let me be gathered to the quiet west.
The sundown splendid and serene.
Death.
The tuneful chorus of Victorian song continued to the
end of the reign and beyond. As well deny the perennial
songsters of the spring as affirm that poetry in the Eng-
lish tongue has not continued vocal since the age of rea-
son went its unlamented way to death, and lyricism re-
awakened with Blake and Chatterton and Burns. The
seventies ushered in many a new if lesser lyrist. Among
the names which have not already found a mention in
these pages are John Payne, happy translator of Villon,
most difficult of the old poets of la vie joyeuse; strange
original, rhapsodic Gerard Hopkins, hushing his song in
the cloister and following, a generation too late, in the
wake of the Oxford Movement; bedridden suffering Eu-
gene Lee-IIamilton, writing strongly and fervidly in his
Imaginary Sonnets and preserving in his own way not a
little of the pictorial and dramatic power of his master
Browning; Oliver Maddox Brown, son of the painter, ex-
traordinarily precocious in art and literature, prose and
verse, dying at little more than the age of Chatterton.
The Wordsworthians, the religious poets, and the sonnet-
eers, too, arc still with us in their thousand tributary rills.
"Frugal" has been the serious and adecpiatc lyrical note
of the eminent critic and Shakespearean scholar, Professor
mt THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Edward Dowden; while Mr. Samuel Waddington, besides
his judicious collections alike of the Sonnets of the Past
and the Sonnets of the Present, has added sonnets of his
own to the most teeming of the garners of English lyrical
verse.
And now this chapter of the Victorians, already too
long, must be brought to a close. The lyrists of greater
note who, beginning to sing in the latter years of the
queen, are still with us and tuneful, those whose poetry
marks the prolongation of influences still vital and work-
ing for the future, must claim attention in the following
chapter. For the nonce we must keep in mind that the
enumeration of influences and literary phenomena in
their order as they arise, loses sight of much that existed
side by side, interlaced and mutually affecting each the
others. For example, Wordsworth was a laureate and a
power in poetry during nearly twenty years of Tenny-
son's and Browning's activity. Tennyson succeeded, a
monarch already strong in a popularity that lasted almost
unbroken to his death; while on the other hand. Browning
came into the recognition of Browning societies, to be-
come a cult and an obsession, only in the eighties when
pre-Raphaelitism had expanded from the intensity of
Rossetti to the diffusion, narrative and lyrical, of Morris
and Swinburne. Moreover there were grades and de-
grees in Victorian poetry to an extent not hitherto known
in English literature. The people that read The House-
hold Philosophy of Tupper constituted neither the audi-
ence of The Light of Asia, The Epic of Hades, nor that of
THE VICTORIAN LYRISTS 263
The Angel in the House, the last of these, be it noted, alone
lyrical; and the age begot its "Tory poets," its lyrists of
Chartism and Fenianism, its Catholic poets, as well as its
poets of "spasm," aspiration, Protestantism and protest.
But enough: assuredly Victoria's age has been one rich in
lyrical poetry, one in which the lyric, too, has extended its
sphere, its diversity of theme and treatment. That it has
often been intellectualized into a something that gives
us pause as to our definitions is not to be denied. That
frequently it has been metamorphosed, too, into a richer,
stranger romanticism than our literature had hitherto
known, is likewise to be acknowledged. And yet the
ground notes of this lyrical chorus, with all its new ca-
priccios, roulades, and novel warblings, remain deep seated
in the essential passions of man, love, hope, the political
and the religious instincts, with devotion to home, coun-
try, and that appreciation of man in nature and acted
on by the hidden and mysterious influences of nature
which has been the richest contrilniLion of English poetry
in the nineteenth century to the literature of the world.
CHAPTER VIII
SOME SUCCESSORS OF SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH
N one of an interesting and exceedingly valu-
able series of essays on English contemporary
poets, completed a few years since, a general
grouping of the more considerable names of
the successors of Meredith and Swinburne was suggested,
which cannot but help us in our present inquiry.^ There
are the Wordsworthians, eldest and most orthodox of
whom, Mr. Robert Bridges, is the chief; and there is the
rhapsodist, Francis Thompson, and Laurence Housman,
who group somewhat together from their discipleship to
the pre-Raphaelites in general and to Coventry Patmore
in particular. There is the wide-spreading and active Cel-
tic revival, headed by Mr. Yeats in Ireland, but disclosing
a sympathetic activity in Scotland in the poetry of the late
"Fiona Macleod" and in lesser poets of Wales and the
Isle of Man. Then there are the virile "poets of empire,"
the late Mr. Henley, Mr. Kipling and Mr. Henry Newbolt;
and the "decadents," such as Mr. Arthur Symons and
the late Ernest Dowson. As to Mr. T. Sturge Moore, Mr.
A. E. Housman, and the late John Davidson, the critic
finds them "differing too greatly from any of the above
groups to be associated with them, and differing as
^ "The Irish Literary Revival," by Cornelius Weygandt, The Se-
wanee Review, xii. No. 4, October, lOO-li.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF SWINBURNE 265
greatly from each other"; and he goes on to quote from
an essay of Mr. Yeats in which that admirable poet and
critic distinguishes the "interests" or absorbing topics of
five of his greater contemporaries : "Contemporary Eng-
lish poets," writes Mr. Yeats, "are interested in the glory
of the world like Mr. Rudyard Kipling; or in the order of
the world like Mr. William Watson; or in the passion
of the world like Mr. John Davidson; or in the pleas-
ure of the world like Mr. Arthur Symons. Mr. Francis
Thompson ... is alone preoccupied with a spiritual life."
With this for our rough chart let us embark on the per-
ilous sea of the present, mindful that in this, our work
with the lyric, we are neither judging any author in the
completeness of his contribution to literature nor (when
he is still with us) even in the completeness of his lyrical
achievement. Moreover few judge well, deprived of the
atmosphere of distance and the perspective of time.
By "the Wordsworthians " among our contemporary
poets, Professor Weygandt, cited above, appears to mean
less those whose cult is nature and the Delphic interpret-
ation of her moods to the inner spirit of man, than the
poets of blended Hebraic order and Hellenistic beauty,
the spirit of which has inspired the august succession
from Spenser and Milton, to (iray, Wordsworth, Tenny-
son, and Matthew Arnold, the spirit which, in a word, is
most justly designated, as the critic has designated it,
"fidelity to the Puritan i)oint of view."' It cannot be
' C. WVygftndt. "The Poetry of Mr. Stephen Phillips." Sewanee Re-
view, January, 1909.
266 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
a mere coincidence that these men were all of univers-
ity training or that their contrasted compeers — Keats,
Browning, Henley, and Yeats — were none of them so
bred. The individual manifestations of the Puritan sense
of order, of responsibility, of an afterworld and of our
relations to it — even when that sense leads to doubt
and negation — may differ in individual cases, but these
things are the ruling qualities that inform alike the po-
etry of Mr. Bridges, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Stephen
Phillips, and others, representative poets of this group.
Mr. Robert Bridges is the dean of our present English
poetry, his earliest work having appeared as far back as
1873, contemporary with the beau brocade and the blue
china of the ballades and villanelles of Mr. Dobson, Mr.
Gosse, and the late Mr. Lang. Mr. Bridges has paid tri-
bute to his training in Latin verses and in the poetic treat-
ment of many a beautiful myth of ancient Greece. He has
written interesting dramas, in one especially. The Feast
of Bacchus, attempting "to reproduce the artistic collo-
quialism of Greek Comedy," and his scholarship in mod-
ern letters is attested by his avowed lyrical debts to Ital-
ian and Spanish poets. In our immediate range of the
lyric there is his sonnet sequence The Growth of Love,
1890, privately printed in black letter type that its in-
nate poetic beauty might be fittingly clothed in the rai-
ment of artistic printing; and thus several others of his
books have been printed. On the other hand, Mr. Bridges
collected his Shorter Poems into a popular form in 1890,
and they have since gone through many editions. The
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S\\TNBURNE 207
lyrical poetry of Mr. Bridges is characterized by simpli-
city, unaffectedness, and a wholesome sentiment in which
cheerfulness and hope abide. His descriptive fidehty to
detail in his poems treating of nature — "There is a hill
beside the silver Thames," "Hark to the merry birds/'
or the exquisite "Garden in September," for example —
possesses both charm and atmosphere. He is full of
echoes of our older poets, less in their words or subject-
matter than in their manner and air. For example, his
general copiousness and ease in versification and his
facile command of familiar metres suggest Wither, his
delightful poem "London Snow" reminds one of Charles
Cotton's famous quatrains on morning, noon, and night,
though the metre is different; and "On a Child Dead"
suggests Lamb's subtler poem addressed to an infant dead
as soon as born. Bridges has the Wordsworthian fidelity
if not the Wordsworthian insight; he has at times, though
not often, the Wordsworthian triviality, and it is doubt-
less as unwitting in him as in his great master. The
Wordsworthian triviality, like the INliltonic want of a
sense of humor, was in each case the price paid for a large
simi)licity of nature that in Milton ignored, in Words-
worth failed to correlate, the importance of things. Mr.
Bridges has something of this, just as his estimable per-
sonality breathes in the sincerity and simi)H(ity of his
lyrical work. Some of his jwrnis seem so natural and ob-
vious as we read them for the first time that we fail fully
to appreciate their unquestionable art. "The idle life
I lead," "Ye thrilled me once, ye mournful strains," "I
268 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
made another song" all are illustrations of this obvious-
ness. Here, for example, is Mr. Bridges' simple, beautiful
creed :
I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise.
And man in his hasty days
Is honored for them.
I too will something make
And joy in the making:
Altho' to-morrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.
And in the lovely poem, "Long are the hours the sun is
above," will be found a delicate spiritualism that fills out
with deeper diapason the poet's love of the world. Has
any one thought of Mr. Bridges as a reincarnate Cam-
pion? Each is deep in fealty to Apollo as the god of po-
etry and song, as well as the father of .^sculapius. Each
theorized on the nature of metre and, with a learning
born of a devoted love of the ancients, looked forward to
new metrical worlds to conquer only to refute the whole
by facile, unaffected, musical lyrical poetry compassed by
a most orthodox following of the tradition of the past.
If Mr. Bridges is a Wordsworthian, possessed of some-
thing of Campion's sweet Elizabethan singing voice, Mr.
William Watson harks back, for his distinction of style, his
grand manner, and for his preoccupation with politics, to
Milton, for his abiding sense of propriety to Gray and the
eighteenth century. Of the eighteenth century, too, is Mr.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S^VINBURNE 269
Watson's critical attitude, his clarity of diction and his
stateliness. Indeed, Mr. Watson's muse is always more ele-
giac than lyrical. There is nothing of its kind finer than
the admirable critical elegies, "The Tomb of Burns,"
"Shelley's Centenary," or "Wordsworth's Grave."
Though dealing, as verse of universal regret must ever
deal, with the larger commonplaces of elegiac emotion,
we must deny to these fine poems (as we must deny to
most of the poetry of Mr. Watson) any marked distinc-
tion of thought. Nor can any marked originality of sub-
ject be posited for Mr. Watson's poetry. His lyrics are
often of the occasional kind, their seriousness alone tak-
ing them out of the category of vers de societe, though not
always successfully lifting them to the higher regions of
lyrical art. When sustained by the power of epigram, Mr.
Watson's shorter poems — "Liberty Rejected," "When
birds were songless on the bough," "Under the dark
and piney steeps," or "Thy voice from inmost dream-
land calls," for example — approach the delicate art of
Landor. We can hardly claim for Mr. Watson any
greater love for nature than that which is the common
birthright of our time. Of minute observance of her ways
there is nothing in him, and j)erliaps it is only once, in
the charming little lyric, "The Lure," that he so much
as touches, in his uniform clarity and definitcness of line,
the skirts of the wayward spirit of romanlic beauty.
More truly a Wonlswortliian in his loving attention to
the flowers that grace his beloved English country-side
and the dumb and vocal animal life that tenants it, is Mr.
270 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Arthur Christopher Benson. In some half dozen volumes
or more since 1893, Mr. Benson has shown himself more
conscious in his literary style than Mr. Bridges and of a
sadder and more introspective muse; less critical than Mr.
Watson and free alike from his political and satirical bias,
Mr. Benson is equally the meditative and elegiac poet
and pervaded with as strong a moral and religious sense.
So, too, Mr. Laurence Binyon is Wordsworthian in the
power of his descriptive detail and in his contemplative
treatment of his favorite London scene for material, al-
though this by no means marks the limits of Mr. Binyon's
range of poetical subject. Wordsworth's famous sonnet,
"On London Bridge," may almost be said to have been
the parent to them all, these "London Visions" of Mr,
Binyon, the "London Voluntaries" of Henley, and the
like poetry, inspired by the metropolis, of Buchanan,
Davidson, and some others: "Now it is a great dray roll-
ing down the street, its giant driver guiding it triumph-
antly; . . . now, the great golden dome of St. Paul's loom-
ing above the smoke- wrapped city; now Salvation Army
singers, in whose enthusiasm the poet sees the reincarna-
tion of the delirious spirit of the Dionysia's 'mad, leafy
revels at the Wine-God's will'; now a quiet sunset on
'full-flooding Thames.' Various lights illumine these city
scenes of Mr. Binyon's devices, but while dawnlight and
full-moon and sunset color some, London at night inspires
so many that I have come to think the characteristic
lights of the poems are the flickering gas of street lamps."
Contrasting some of these interesting choses vues of Lon-
SOME SUCCESSORS OF SWINBURNE 271
don, which border none the less on the genus lyric for the
emotion vnih which their atmosphere is surcharged, the
critic continues: "Mr. Binyon is most intent on the pic-
ture of his subject, where Henley is as much interested in
the surge and sound that accompanies the picture as in
the picture itself. Henley, too, is almost always the im-
pressionist. Robert Buchanan cares much less for mak-
ing pictures of city life than he does for telling the life-
stories of victims of that life. Davidson has generally a
problem to propound as well as a story to suggest and a
picture to paint. "^
To return to our "Puritan line" — Spenser, Milton,
Gray, Wordsworth, Arnold — in Mr. Stephen Phillips we
have once more the scholarly poet, telling over again in
elaborated and beautiful verse, dramatic and epic, the
lovely Greek myths that have been hallowed by centuries
of transmitted culture. Mr. Phillips is not primely original
in thought; but he is a born stylist, limpid and dignified
in his often exquisite poetical diction, and, for his individ-
ual trait of difference, " preoccupied [to an extraordinary
degree in a poet who is neither mystical nor theological]
with the world beyond the grave." A quiet acceptance
of the dead as always present in our lives is the theme of
poem after poem of Mr. Phillips. ^ In others there is al-
most the Hellenic vivid sense for the world, together with a
' C. Wcygandt. "The Poetry of Mr. Laurence Binyon," Scwanee
Review. July, 1905. pp. 282-283.
» Witncs.-i "The Apparition," "Earth Bound," "To a Lost Love," for
example.
272 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
very un-Hellenic recognition of human weakness. Beauti-
ful and of a dignified solemnity are some of the shorter
poems of Mr. Phillips. Equally a devotee of Greek beauty
is Mr. T. Sturge Moore, and equally happy in retelling
those golden tales of the ancients that no repetition at
the hands of a true poet can ever stale. Hardly since the
time of Keats have lines so colorful, so instinct with real-
ity, been written of that dim past; though Mr. Moore has
neither the music nor the crystalline clarity of Keats, for
which he substitutes a vivid picturesqucness, his inherit-
ance from the pre-Raphaelites.^ The art of Mr. Moore is
at its best in descriptive passages dealing minutely with
details that build up a striking poetical picture, and he
has many a poetic grace that is none the less effective
from its Homeric or other classical origin. Both of these
poets are elegiac rather than strictly lyrical, and few, if
any of their professed poems of lyrical type, bubble with
the joy of song.
With Mr. A. E. Housman, author of that remarkable
and original collection of lyrics, A Shropshire Lad, we
return once more to our Wordsworthians; and Mr. Hous-
man's Wordsworthianism consists in a realization, often
as complete as Wordsworth's at his best, of the innate
poetry of common and rural life, seen objectively but felt
within. The language of these poems is so simple, the
thought so unadorned, or where adorned so natural, the
* See "Theseus," "Medea," above all the fine poetic drama.
Aphrodite against Artemis, and the lyrics of the volumes Theseus and
The Gazelles.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S^\TNBURNE 273
metres so usual, the subjects so universal, that we must
seek, if we are to appreciate to the full the consummate
art that underlies them. Mr. Housman is no mere rural
singer like Burns or even Barnes, but a man of culture
who has reincarnated his poet's spirit m every -day Shrop-
shire life. An interesting contrast has been suggested
between A Shropshire Lad, and Mr. Hardy's strange but
holding volume, Essex Poems, the gatherings-in of realistic
reminiscences of early years, told with the literary and
dramatic power that makes Mr. Hardy one of the great
novelists, but with an occasional awkwardness and pre-
vailing stiffness that marks the prose-man working in
verse. Mr, Housman has none of this stiffness, but is
master of the medium in which he worlcs; but he shares to
a remarkable degree Mr. Hardy's fatalism, his sense of
the oppression of reality, as he shares his fine abandon-
ment to the charm of sorceress Nature. This is only one
of the several variations and changes of mood that these
choice lyrics portray; but the close is characteristic of the
unaffected and wistful melancholy that pervades them,
whatever the theme.
'T is time, I think, by Wenlork town
The gol<icn broom .should blow;
The hiiwlliorn sprinkled up and down
Should cha,rf,'o the land with snow.
Spring will not wait the loitcrcr'n time
Willi kcf-p.s so long uway;
So olhtTs wear the broom and climb
The hedgerows heaped with may.
274 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge ,
That will not shower on me.
Leaving to the anthologies the many lesser and estim-
able Wordsworthians in the variety of their introspection,
their meditation, sonneteering, and ceremonious observ-
ances before the altar of their goddess. Nature, let us turn
to the two poets whose later inspiration in a way links
on to the pre-Raphaelites and the later lyrical poetry of
Coventry Patmore. It was at the opening of the year 1894
that that "captain of song" (as Thompson called him in
later beautiful lines on his portrait) heralded to the world
a new poet, Francis Thompson, in a short appreciation
of admirable insight; and no less a poet than Browning
added, too, his cordial appreciation. Thompson was of a
Roman Catholic family that went back into the Mother
Church with the Oxford Movement. He seems to have
been a creature strangely incapable of taking care of
himself in a work-a-day world; and his vicissitudes, as a
shoemaker's assistant, a sandwich-man, a match-seller in
London streets, a very pariah among men, were they actu-
ally known or in place for revelation here, would outrival
the uttermost strangeness of biographical adventure.
Saved literally from the street by the friendship of Mr.
and Mrs. Meynell (the latter a writer of memorable
lyrics), Thompson passed the last years of his life in a
Sussex religious house in the quiet needful for the devel-
opment of his unique poetic genius, and ceased wisely to
SOME SUCCESSORS OF SWINBURNE 275
write when he felt, towards the end, his poetic powers to
be failing. Several volumes, Poems, Sister Songs, and
New Poems, followed the poet's immediate acceptance
among the greater singers of the late Victorian days; and
the earlier patronizing terms, "a reincarnate Crashaw,"
" a modern Cowley," " a rhapsodist of incorrigible fertility
and of as incorrigible an obscurity," have been followed
by a general recognition in Francis Thompson of a poet of
superb imagination, "inexhaustible opulence," a seer as
well as a singer of unimpeachable genius. Thompson's
subjects are as diverse as they are imaginatively beautiful
and happy in treatment. The seraphic praise of spiritual
beauty, an almost metaphysical treatment of the passion
of love, a hymning of the ineffable glory of dawn or of the
sinking of the sun to rest in their analogies as cosmic phe-
nomena related to universal life and inevitable death —
such are some of the extraordinary themes of this extraor-
dinary singer. His inspiration is suffused with a spirit of
worship and praise that transcends the ordinary signifi-
cance of the word religious as his use of scientific thought
and metiiphysical ratiocination is consistently transmuted
into vitalized and surp.issingiy elTective poetry. No Eng-
lish poet except Donne has so poetized metaphj'sical
thought: compare
She wears that body but as one indues
A rohr, half rareloss, for it is the use;
Altliou^li hcT soul .'ind it ho fair u>;rcc
We sure may, unaltaint of heresy.
Conceit it ini>{ht the soul's begetter lir.
276 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
with this of Donne:
One, whose clear body was so pure and thin
Because it need disguise no thought within,
'T was but a through-light scarf her mind t' enroll
Or exhalation breathed out of her soul.
Again, no English poet except Crashaw has so transfused
his words in his ideas, his ideas in his words, by means of
the white heat of ecstatic emotion. Nor is conceit and the
extravagant metaphor of the Carolan absent from the
Victorian, though often justified by its supreme success,
as for example where the creation of a field flower is
described :
God took a fit of Paradise-wind,
A strip of coerule weather,
A thought as simple as Himself,
And ravelled them together.
With a power over the larger cadences of verse only
exceeded by Shelley himself, I find in Francis Thompson a
richer color, a more esoteric thought, dare it be said, if less
melody, a more harmonized music. To begin quoting
Thompson is to be caught in the maze of his exquisite
imagery; although his large thought, fretted with recur-
rent graces, scarcely lends itself readily to fragmentary
quotations. His is the command of music, color, picture,
and upbearing lyric fire. He can be subtle in psychology
as in the little series, "A Narrow Vessel," charmingly
delicate and fanciful, as in the dainty lines "To a snow
flake," magnificently daring as where he cries:
Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed;
In very deed.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF SWINBURNE 277
Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth.
Reintegrated are the heavens and earth;
From sky to sod.
The world's unfolded blossom smells of God.
And he can compel a great thought, at need, into a dis-
tich, as
Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven
So ready is Heaven to stoop to him.
While the early discipleship of Mr. Laurence Housman
to the pre-Raphaelites is not to be questioned, I can find
nothing of the rhapsodist, of the poet that spontaneously
and ecstatically sings in him; and his contrasts rather than
his resemblances to Francis Thompson are the most
striking.' Thompson is religious, Mr. Housman is theo-
logical; Thompson's fervor is the current on which he
is borne, Mr. Housman 's fervor and sincerity — and it
would be vain to deny him either — seem fully in his
control, sometimes a little goaded to expression, eked out
and ingenious. ^NFr. Housman seems possessed of a far
more genuine conviction of sin than is fashionable in our
current practical theologies. To him, after seventeenth-
century ideals, this life is a prison-house in which the soul
is justly incarcerated, and man is essentially vain and
worthless. Submission to God is a mysterj-^ which no man
can fathom, and a longing hope for anniliiljilion is all
that remains. Mr. Housman seems never really glad, his
inspiration is ever soml)r<' and life a tragic fact. He says
somewhere, ** Unfortunately there are to be found, to sit in
• See Mr. Housman's first volume, Green Arras, 189fl.
278 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
judgment, minds of a literal persuasion that take from the
artist his own soul, to set it in the image that he has
made." ^ But who can escape such a temptation where
the poetic attitude is so consistently maintained. With
the confession of an absolute inability to sympathize with
the sombre, theological, hopeless pose of Mr. Housman,
let us grant him the recognition due his carefully executed
verse and the distinction that undoubtedly enables him
to wear his Rue with a difference.^
Although the late John Davidson is absolutely removed
in his whole manner of thought from these two poets of
faith, he seems best described, like the former, as a rhap-
sodist in whom, however, force rules rather than the sense
of beauty. Davidson has been aptly dubbed " a Scotsman
of the perfervid, not the canny type": and perfervidness
is the quality that accounts for his poetic eloquence and
extravagance of diction, his lapses of technique and the
circumstance that, in all his ably written dramas, his witty
and poetic Fleet Street Eclogues , and his vigorous and
significant ballads, there is scarcely to be found one com-
pletely successful lyric. His force often becomes violence,
his figurative language conceit, his originality stridency.
For Nature he has a passion; and he handles her like a
Goth. A thrush sings for Davidson "like one that sings
in Hell"; daisies are "the land-wide Milky-Way" and
elsewhere "a snowy leprosy" upon the land; a lily is "on
fire with newly budded love." And Davidson's poetic
' All Fellows, preface.
* One of Mr. Housman's books is entitled Spikenard, another Rue.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S^\^NBURNE 279
theory is as violent as the extremes of his poetry. " Poetry
is the will to live, the will to power; poetry is the empire.
Poetry is life and force"; and rime is "a property of de-
cadence." ^ But enough; that lyricism should flourish in
such hands is amazing: to leave the poetry of Davidson
unmentioned among his peers would be unjust.
From Thompson and other poets whose lives were
pervaded by the fervor of the older faith, the transition
is best made to the lyrists of the Neo-Celtic revival by
means of the late Lionel Johnson, an Englishman by
birth, though proud of his Irish blood and sympathetic
with Ireland's traditions and ideals. The range of John-
son's poetry is wider than that of either Francis Thomp-
son or Mr. Ilousman. The religious note in him is less
ungoverncd and rhapsodic than the former's, and freer
from the ecclesiasticisra and hopelessness of the latter.
Johnson has the scholar's reminiscence of his reading in
the literature of his own tongue as well as in the classics,
and he translates his recollections into the terms of genuine
poetry in poems such as "Oxford Nights" or "The Clas-
sics," and in a way quite his own. His is a deep seated
love of place and of^ individual friends, a fine sense for
nature and an intellectuality above most of his immediate
fellows. Johnson's, too, is the distinction of a fine poetic
style, more indistinct than Watson's, firmer sinewed and
more controlled than that of Francis Thomi)son and in-
fused with a deeper originality. There is no hackneyed
• Holiday and Other Poems with a Note on Poetry, 1900, p. 149.
280 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
thought in lyrics such as "Bagley Wood," "Harmonies,"
"The Precept of Silence," or "Cadg worth":
My windows open to the autumn night.
In vain I watch for sleep to visit me:
How should sleep dull mine ears, or dim my sight,
Who saw the stars, and listened to the sea?
Ah, how the City of our God is fair!
If, without sea, and starless though it be.
For joy of the majestic beauty there.
Men shall not miss the stars, nor mourn the sea.
And now a word as to the lyrical poetry of the Celtic
revival, concerning which if the present writer exhibit a
somewhat unorthodox attitude, the total lack of anything
Celtic in his blood may be pleaded in extenuation if not in
excuse. As some have written, it might be thought that
there had been no imagination or poetry in England had
it not been for the spirit of the Celt, that the supernatural,
the spiritual, the ideal, the romantic, all were evolved by
the Celt and existent in the proportion in which Celtic
blood had intermingled to enrich the sluggish Saxon stream.
When it is recalled, however, that, save for a few of the
remotest corners of the British Isles (which corners, by
the way, have not produced any great poetry), the entire
realm is populated by a mixed race, and when it is fur-
ther recalled that Spenser, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Shel-
ley, and Keats, in none of whom the Celtic strain can be
proved to be predominant, each and all possessed these
"Celtic" traits of imagination, ideality, romanticism, and
supernaturalism to a high degree, the ineptitude of refer-
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S^^^NBURNE 281
ring all these things to one source is too patent to require
further discussion. In our concern with the lyric written
in the English tongue we have disregarded for the most
part geographical boundaries, at least those of Great
Britain. It is impossible not to remember Burns and
Hogg as Scotchmen; we need not emphasize that circum-
stance with Stevenson or Thomson. Goldsmith and Emily
Bronte were both Irish: which of us remembers the last
as an Irishwoman until we find her claimed for admirable
poetry, not distinctively Irish, in a book of "Irish verse"?
In short, as in the case of poetry written in America by
those born elsewhere than in any of the British Isles,
there is a danger of making too much of these geograph-
ical divisions. None the less, as we have already seen,
there is a Celtic revival which embraces the literary activi-
ties of natives of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and the
most active as well as the most distinctively national
[)hase of that revival is the Irish literary movement. To
the last let us turn our attention, recalling that we must
leave out of consideration its very material contributions
to imaginative prose and to the drama wherein it is un-
questionably the most distinguished.
In a very attractive little volume entitled A Book of
Irl.fh Verse Selected from Modern U'ritern, Mr. Yeats has
(oilectcd together what his fine [Mjelic taste C(msi(lers
best in the poetry of his countrymen from Oliver (iold-
smith to Lionel Johnson and Miss Dora Sigerson. Sheri-
dan, Moore, Darley and Mangan, Ferguson, de Vere,
Davis and Allingham, all iu their diflcriug degrees, with
282 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
some others belong to the past, and have received such
attention in this book as a sense of proportion can allow
them. To that past, too, belongs Edward Walsh, the se-
lections from whose poetry in Mr. Yeats's volume show
a ready adapter of Irish song to English verse with an
effective employment of sonorous Irish proper names, es-
pecially by way of refrain. Two other poets of the volume,
each yet alive and equally beholden to the wealth of the
literary and traditional literature of their favored coun-
try, are Mr. Thomas William Rolleston and Dr. Douglas
Hyde, who have been so active in the forward movement
of Irish literary thought.' Some of these artistic English
versions labelled "from the Irish" — "Were you on the
mountain," "Thy grief on the sea," or "I shall not die
for thee," all by Dr. Hyde — are charming; and, in the
absence of definite information on the subject, one won-
ders how much is really "old Irish" and how much is due
to the cultivated literary thought of the modern poet and
his fine command of the tongue of his Sassenach enemy.
Mr. Yeats is unquestionably the head and front of the
contemporary Celtic movement in literature. We like
and honor him for his theories and ideals as we acclaim
him and admire him for his beautiful poetry, narrative,
dramatic, and lyrical. The inspiration and fascination of
a primitive race, simple, noble, brave beyond the heroes,
imaginative above the poets, mysteriously half-suggested
^ Mr. Rolleston is editor with Mr. A. Stopford Brooke, the well-known
critic, who is also an Irishman and a poet, of A Treasury of Irish Poetry
to the English Torujue, 1905, an admirable work.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S\MNBURNE 283
in the fragmentary' literature that has come down to us,
all this is patent to the reader of ]Mr. Yeats; and it is
equally patent that the Irish poet is heir as well to an
unlrish inheritance, his limpid English diction, his com-
mand of English metres and music in words, his mastery
of many an image and many a noble thought which has
come to him by right of his poetic inheritance and by
way of the long and august line of English poets that has
preceded him. The pre-Raphaelite affinities of Mr. Yeats
are not to be disputed, specific definiteness in the midst of
visionary indefinitcness — "the red rose upon the rood of
Time," "The nine bean rows" of Innisfree, "the white
feet of angels seven." His sense of color, which is quite his
own, is yet often as conventionalized as Rossetti's: "the
blue star of twilight," "the leopard colored trees," "a
green drop in the surge," "the curd-pale moon "; the heart
of Fergus is a "small slate-colored thing," and "white"
are the birds of death. In lyrics such as "The Cloak,
the Boat and the Shoes," "A Dream of a Blessed Spirit,"
especially in "Ephemera" (too long to quote here), is to
be found the new, strange note of this best of the Irish
singers. There is a sense of unreality about Mr. Yeats's
poetic treatment of this visible world that extends to his
imaginative treatment of the other world as well:
For the elemental bcinRs go
Alxiiit my hilili- l<i and fro.
In flood and fire and clay and wind
They huddU; from man's pondering mind;
Yet he who treads in austere ways
May surely meet their anrit-nt gaze.
2S4 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
Man ever journeys on with them
After the red-rose-bordcrcd hem.
Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon
A Druid land, a Druid tune!
It is, after all, the delicate modern craftsman's use of this
delightful old material of a perished age. We shall not
ask Mr. Yeats if he believes in the charming supernatural-
ism that he practises so well (in his plays, The Land of
Heart's Desire or in The Countess Cathleen, for example),
or if his tone of fatalistic otherworldliness is "old Irish "or
modern Maeterlinckian.
Another leader of the Neo-Celtic poetry in Ireland is
"A. E.," that is, Mr. George William Russell, who has
been described as "The Irish Emerson," a sobriquet far
from unhappy considering his transcendental ideals, his
mysticism, his "poetry of cold ecstasy," and on the other
hand his eminent practicality as a man. Mr. Russell is
poet, painter, dramatist, organizer of an agricultural soci-
ety, editor and inspirer of much in the forward move-
ment, literary and economic, of his country. Poetry is to
him no mere art, the expression of beauty; it is rather a
species of enthusiasm by means of which the poet is up-
lifted into a closer communion with the universal spirit,
by means of which, to employ the Emersonian phrase,
"the soul returns to the Over-soul." ^ Twilight in sunrise
or more particularly falling into sunset, the effects of light
in darkness and dreamland with the massing glories of the
evening and midnight skies — these more commonly than
^ C. Weygandt, in Sewanee Review, April, 1907.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S^\TNBURNE 285
the phenomena of terrestrial nature, offer "A. E." the
materials of his art. "A. E." loves to hark back to the
glories of remote ages, Babylon, Egypt, legendary Ire-
land, to feel that at times we may attain the detachment,
the abstractness of "our ancestral selves." His is a vivid
sense of the immensity of time and its unity, of the rein-
carnation of the past in the present; and his noble poetry,
which is unEmersonian in its consummate technique and
uniform excellence, is preoccupied almost to the degree
of sameness with "the calm and proud procession of
eternal things."
There is not among the poets of The Book of Irish Verse
or elsewhere an Irish lyrist who ranks with these — John-
son, Yeats, Russell; though there are charming and in-
teresting poems by Charles Weekes, who shares somewhat
the mysticism of Mr. Russell, "John Eglinton" and the
several distinguished Irishwomen, Miss Dora Sigcrson
(Mrs. Shorter), Mrs. Kathcrine Tynan Ilinkson, Miss
Moira O'Neill, Miss Nora Hopper (Mrs. Chesson), and
Miss Carberry (now Mrs. McManus), who have made
their country's lore and sentiment lyrically tuneful.
There remains one name that links on here logically with
these poets who are Celtic and so largely mystic. In 1905
occurred the death of William Sharp, the friend and bio-
grapher of Rossctti, long known to the world as one whose
somewhat slender promise in poetry had been superseded
by a fuller achievement in criticism. Willi the <leath of
Mr. Sharp came the disclosure, long susp(>cle<l, that he
was really the author of the interesting work in verse
286 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
and prose which had been appearing for some years under
the name of "Fiona Macleod." ^ The lyrical verse of
"Fiona Macleod" is possessed of an unmistakable charm;
"hers" (shall we say?) are the graces of simplicity and
melody, haunting at times. Here, too, is the Celtic mys-
tery and melancholy which, while in no wise insincere,
does not strike the reader as so deep and essential as it is
merely artistic. William Sharp as a poet would scarcely
have been without Rossetti; his poetical reincarnation as
"Fiona Macleod" would have been impossible but for
Irish neo-romanticism.
From the otherworld and the world that has been, we
turn to the world that is with Mr. Kipling and "the poets
of empire." Mr. Kipling has worried the critics, who find
him unauthentic in his art and declare his language jour-
nalese. And Mr. Kipling has retorted with spirit and un-
mistakable import as to art and as to the limits thereof. In
his verse and prose he shares the experience of several of
the greatest of English writers in that he is untraditional,
unconventional, unbound by the petty by-laws of what we
may term literary drawing-room manners. Shakespeare,
Defoe, Dickens, each was equally unauthentic in his time,
and each was equally contemporaneous and successful.
Mr. Kipling takes the current talk of the street, the gun-
room, the smoking-room on liner or transcontinental rail-
road, and infuses into it a melody of words, a pointedness
of expression sustained by a sentiment or emotion gener-
^ See the admirable memoir of her husband, compiled by Mrs. Sharp
and published in 1910.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S^VINBURNE 287
ally accepted: and produces poetry as the result. His
heroes are men who do and dare; his horizon extends over
the superficies of the globe and faces strange lands and
strange faces; but his ideas are circumscribed by the preju-
dices and the generosities of his English blood. Mr. Kip-
ling is not alone in his realism, his vigor, his patriotism, or
his employment of verse for the conveyance of contemp-
orary political comment. This last descended from Milton
to Tennyson, Buchanan, and Watson, to name only these.
War poetry is one of England's lyrical birthrights from
Michael Drayton to this our own "era of peace." Nor was
Mr. Kipling either the first to give us the poetry of the
barrack-room and that fine recognition of the worth of
even a heathen foeman: witness some of the stirring
poems of Sir Francis Hastings Doyle. Mr. Kipling's dis-
tinction — as often pointed out — is his grasp of the
great idea of empire, of expansion, of the essential unity
of the Anglo-Saxon race, the greatness, the glory, the
heroic mission of which to subjugate the world is with him
alike a religion and an obsession. Lyrically Mr. Kipling
is abundantly successful and that, too, with material that
daintier poets might hesitate to employ. His instrument
is the military band in which the wind of brass and of
wood sounds out, bravely cmi)hasized with instruments
of percussion. None the less, it is astonishing what ten-
derness and sweetness he at times achieves in his masterly
use of the material at hand. The cockney Tommy Atkins,
the tramp whaler, the renegade and no'er-do-wcll knock-
ing about the globe (to say nothing of his Oriental figures)
2S8 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
find their glorification in Kipling, and the sentiments of
their universal humanity raise his verses again and again
into the regions of poetry. In the patriotic verse of Henry
Newbolt the present writer feels a decided drop. Mr.
Newbolt is contained in a corner of Mr. Kipling's lordly
domain, and his song, save for a few poems latterly, is
comprehended in a fervent love of England and her heroes
and in praises of her naval prestige. Unlike his master,
although a fluent verseman Mr. Newbolt is rarely mu-
sical; only the refrain of "The Fighting Temeraire" in his
earliest volume, Admirals All, really haunts the memory.
Mr. Alfred Noyes, too, is "a poet of empire"; and in one
fine lyric at least, "The Island Hawk, a song for the
launching of his majesty's aerial navy," he has extended
England's primacy of the sea to the dominion of the air.
But Mr. Noyes is many other things in poetry besides, —
a disciple of Buchanan and the lyrists of London streets,
in the dramatic and humanitarian touch of such poems
as "In a Railway Carriage" or "An East End Coffee
House"; of Meredith, perhaps, in his fanciful, and at
times imaginative, poetry of nature.^ With Mr, John
Masefield we return to the more accepted limits of
the "poets of empire." There is atmosphere about his
"Spanish Waters," as about his bits of English land-
scape, and he holds lands not in fief to the principality
of Kipling. As to the rest, who hector with Buchanan
or strut after Kipling, their name is legion and their fame
is negligible. The one great fact for England is the sea,
' See especially the charming poem, "The Rock Pool."
SO^IE SUCCESSORS OF SAYINBURNE 289
and he would be but a poor Briton in these our late facile
times who could not turn "a song of empire" and admon-
ish England of her greatness, of her burden, or of her
forgetfulness.
Lastly of this grouping there is Mr. Arthur Symons and
his fellow-worshipper at the shrine of Aphrodite, the late
Ernest Dowson, to name in this most ancient cult of the
poets only the foremost of her ever-continuous host of
devotees. Mr. Symons has told effectively of the shy and
vagabond life of Dowson, and edited his poetry with the
affectionate regard born of a kinship of tastes.^ By some
Dowson has been esteemed the superior poet; he is assur-
edly less the conscious man of letters, and scarcely a line
of his slender volume is without its interest. Mr. Symons
is a distinguished critic and a poet of an intense and ver-
itable gift, however he has elected to limit the range of his
melody. Clearly Mr. Symons caught the torch of his erotic
song at the altars which Swinburne lighted to the same
great goddess, but he has not followed his master into
the fanes of other deities and his music is less dithyrambic
and diverse. Of late the critics have much employed the
term "decadent," to apply or misapply to any trait or
idiosyncrasy which the particular critic of the moment
may happen to dislike in the j)oct of his particular men-
tion. In the arcrj)tcd sense, decay is the antithesis of life;
it is the fate of the bud to open and of the full blown flower
to fall. In another sense, dissolution and the signs of
di.ssolution are as much a process of nature as birth and
' The Poems of Ernest Dowson, Portland, Maine, 1892.
290 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
the evidences of growth. That a poet should be dubbed a
poet of decadence because of his preoccupation with man's
passion for woman seems absurd. In the intensity of its
earthiness, in its inconstancy, and in the despair and re-
gret that the contemplation of the ashes of desire leave
always in him who has burned in the flame, human passion
is in itself no more degenerate than any other preoccupa-
tion in literature, that for example of the satirist or of the
hymnist w^ho finds, in every work of God, the symbolic
figuration of the ceremonials of his individual cult. How-
ever, it is not to be denied that in Mr. Symons and, to a
lesser degree, in Dowson, there is a neurotic note, unlike
the cynicism and flippancy of the Carolan lyrists and the
sentimentality that followed in later generations. The
ecstasies, the raptures of love, the fatalism with which its
brevity and its haunting memories are met, the acknow-
ledgement of passion's imperious mastery — these are
decadent notes : notes that seem those only of singers that
have made "pleasure" the end of life and, joying in it to
the full, have known to the full its vanity. In poems such
as "The Chimera" (a remarkable piece) and "The Dogs,"
in lyrics, often poetically exquisite, such as the collection
" Bianca," in single poems, "Morbidezza," " Stella Maris,"
or "Leves Amores," will be found the unmistakably "de-
cadent" note that Mr, Symons has caught with some
other features of his delicate and seductive art from such
men as Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Mr. Archer's valuable volume, Poets of the Younger Gen-
eration, now ten years old, includes twenty-three names.
SOME SUCCESSORS OF S\MNBURNE 291
A dozen have received our attention; eight others are
American and fall not therefore within the scheme of this
book. Four more, Mr. Trench, author of Deirdre Wed,
Mrs. Hinkson, Miss Hopper (Mrs, Chesson), and Miss
Sigerson (Mrs. Shorter) belong more or less closely to the
"Irish movement." The rest, Mr. Le Gallienne, Mr.
Money-Coutts, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch among them,
each deserves critical attention, and should have it here
did the plan of this book permit so close a scrutiny of our
contemporary poetry. To differentiate, too, the sincere,
capable, and often beautiful poetry of the eight women of
British birth whose names appear in Mr. Archer's list of
honor, would be equally worth while, but disproportion-
ate. Mrs. Meyncll, for example, is distinguished among
poets of her sex for her mastery of form and her distinc-
tion of manner, Mrs. Woods for her intellectuality. Mrs.
Radford is a very genuine lyrist whose verses sound with a
note unrcpetitious of others' songs; and as might be ex-
pected, in the poets of Irish birth we reach mostfrcciucntly
that weird and wistful sorrow — though less often the
magic — that criticism associates with the Celt. As to
the many new asj)irants for poetic fame who press upon
the contemporary critic their various claims for immedi-
ate recognition, we arc too near as yet to do them justice
and would rather err in a knowing silence than by false
acclaim.
In this our study of the English lyric, we have been d
traught with many considerations. For the lyric in one
a
292 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
age was not the lyric of all, and our point of view has
necessarily shifted with the changing procession of time.
Two elements, however, remain permanent to distinguish
the lyric from other kinds of poetry: that which makes ^
the lyric an expression of the world within, and secondly,
the element of song. In Anglo-Saxon times we find the
lyric as yet in solution, and unseparated from imagin-
ative elements of other kinds. The spirit of the age
was serious and gloomy, abashed before the mysterious
powers of nature, sensible of the littleness of man; and
the tone of its inward spirit was elegiac, a tone, be it re-
membered, that has remained the essential ground-note
of English poetry to our present day. With the trouvere
came gaiety, song, and lyrical form, though we are never
to forget the foundations of the music of poetry in the
rhythm of the folk and the enormous contribution, could
we but know its limits and nature, of the ballad to early
lyrical song. Medieval song was alike the folk's, the
minstrel's, and the dignified possession of the church.
And the lines that divided each from each were often
ill defined. None the less English lyrical poetry from
the earliest mediaeval times has about it the conscious-
ness of art, a matter determinable from its elaborate
and varied form and from the completeness with which
it approaches the motives and conventions of French
lyrical poetry. The mediaeval lyrist, were he clerk,
monk, or minstrel, remained for the most part anony-
mous, and the great names in the poetry of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries, even Chaucer's among
CONCLUSION 293
them, are not such for their contributions to the lyrical
art.
In Dunbar and Skelton we reach for the first time in
the lyric a modern tone, howsoever each was allied in
habit of thought and in practice of poetry with the medi-
aeval past. Both the Scottish James IV and Henry VIII
were immensely interested in poetry, but it was in the
court of the latter that new influences from the Continent
came to revolutionize English lyrical poetry in particular
and to introduce in full power that subjective and indi-
vidual note in the impetus of which we are still living.
The difference between the song of the minstrel or the
fervid Mariolatry of the medieval hymn and our lyrics of
to-day is a difference in kind; the difference between the
songs and sonnets of Wyatt or Surrey and the love poetry
of to-day is merely a difference in degree. Willi Wyatt, the
influence of Petrarch came into the language, substitut-
ing a Platonized cult of conventionalized passion for the
earlier and e(|ually conventionalized lyrics of idealized
courtship, the poetical staple of troubadour and trouvere,
but often spiritualizing and cimobling that cult in the
very process tliat made it again and again the spontaneous
outpouring of an individual human pjission. It matters
less than nothing whether Sidney loved Stella or not,
whether Shakesi)e;ire unlocked his heart in the sonnets,
or Sj)enser married the lady whom he courted so abso-
lutely in accord with the canons of Petrarchan art. What
docs matter is that in the splendid body of Elizabethan
sonnets and in the songs, pastoral, incidental to the drama.
294 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
written to be set to music, sacred and profane, we have
as sincere, as spontaneous, as artistic, and as musical an
outburst of lyrical poetry as any nation or time can boast.
In view of this we may grant that the Elizabethan lyric
is unequal, that it is more an art of great impact than of
sustained effect, that there were a few in this prodigious
chorus of sweet sound that could not sing and would not
be silent. But in large, never has the gift of song been so
widely diffused, so lavishly displayed, so crowned with
definite artistic success. Only a few of our later lyrists
can stand the test of juxtaposition beside the best lyrical
poetry of Breton, Daniel, Drummond, or Campion, not
to mention the greater names. The things that the Eliz-
abethans set out to do, they did incomparably well ;
nor can we claim with all our djversity a greater pro-
fundity for more recent song, in view of the depth of
thought, the wealth of imagination, and the fullness
of significance that characterizes, now and again, the
lyrical poetry of Greville, Shakespeare, Jonson, and
Donne.
Neither does the lyric in the days of King James and
King Charles fall much inferior; for some of the greater
earlier names continue into the reign of the first to be
succeeded by lesser though still potent voices. There is a
richness of color and a choice perfection of form about
many of the lyrics of the Stuart days that go far to com-
pensate for the loss of something of the spontaneous
freshness of Elizabeth's time. It is difficult to subscribe
to a recent opinion that belittles Herrick to a place below
CONCLUSION ^95
Waller, and falls into diatribes as to the petty subjects ^
of that delightful poet's delicate art.^ Among the lyrists
it is not always by their philosophy of life that ye shall
know them, and we could ill spare Herrick, Carew, or
Suckling, were our gain only among the deeps of the
understanding. A feature of Carolan times in the history
of poetry was the rise of the devotional lyric in the hands
of Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan, to a union of the
choicest devotional fervor with a competent poetic art. '
These names stand to-day unparalleled in the history of
the English religious lyric, however an occasional poem
may rise to a place beside their liest endeavors. In Milton,
the joyous spirit of Renaissance poetry passed into the
shadow of Puritanism and in so doing gained in nobil-
ity, in artistic purpose and restraint far more than it
lost. Milton's classicism came pure from the inspiring
font of Ilippocrene ; the classicism of Dry^den was of a
less authentic source, and was rather a classicism of \
reaction.
Whatever our definitions of these abused words it is
best to recognize always that "classicism and romanti-
cism are tendencies rather than opposed methods of art.
Literature has always partaken of both, although one
may dominate in one age, the other in another." ^ In the
1 P. K. More, ill .III .irticlc on Hcrrirlc, The Nalion, October,
1012.
* See the present writer'.s "lien Jonson and the Classical School."
Puhlicalions of the Modern Language Association of America, xiii.
1898; andlhc lulpfiil (Icfinitions of W. A. KvWstm, Knscntial.i of I'oftnj,
19114. p. 1.1.
296 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
seventeenth century the fertile and ready EHzabethan
imagination which had made the age of Shakespeare glori-
ous, degenerated at times into ingenuity, extravagance,
and fantasticality, and the concettists practised a species
of perverted Petrarchism that became an abomination
to all men of common sense. It was because of this that
the classical taste of Ben Jonson, a force counter to the
romanticists of his time, made headway to lead, in a suc-
cession of very definite steps, through Waller and Dryden
to the restrictive "classical" poetry of the days of Pope.
.In this rationalizing process the lyric nearly expired, for
the lyric is dependent more than any other form of poetry
on the exercise of the imagination, or at least on the incen-
tive of her lively foster-sister, the fancy. It was for this
' reason, despite the noble sonnets of Milton, that the idea
of a lyric degenerated in the days of Dryden into a poem
of gallantry or, at best, a product of sentimentality ; and
it continued to languish in an atmosphere of indulgent
contempt until an imaginative conception of man and the
I world reasserted itself with the revival of the romantic
temper.
That that revival, beginning with Blake and Chatterton,
should have been manifold was in the nature of things.
For the new romanticism flowered in the glorified folk-
poetry of Burns, in Byron's reincarnation of the spirit of
revolt, and in Shelley's impracticable idealist's passion
for reforming mankind; in a new unveiling of earth in her
perennial beauty, that was Keats; and in a revelation of
the divine significance of that beauty to man, that was
CONCLUSION 297
Wordsworth. It is impossible here to recapitulate the
many notes in that Renaissance of wonder, that spread
from the supernaturalism of Coleridge to the artistic
medisevalism of Tennyson, and to that interesting con-
ventionalized realization of strange beauty which we de-
signate pre-Raphaelitism. Among Victorian poets the
lyric conformed ever more and more to the complexities,
the doubts, and the aspirations of our intricate modern
life, opening a hundred new channels for the expression T
of human emotion and keeping pace in the variety of its
form and mood with an age the essence of which was its
eclecticism. It is no wonder that we pause before some
new province, reduced to the dominion of poetry, and
question the authenticity, as some did with Browning,
of an art so novel and unsupported with the buttresses
of precedent. With Wordsworth holding far over into
the reign, with the Tcnnysonian artistry, with Browning's
wealth of significance, and with the incomparable music
and technical virtuosity of Swinburne all considered,
Victoria's reign was an extraordinary time for poetry,
and the essence of that i)oetry, here as elsewhere, was
lyrical. The Oxf(;rd Movement was less fraught with
meaning to the development of poetry than to the his-
tory of human thought ; but if we associate Ncwnuin's
return to a more primitive form of Christianity with the
return of Rossetti and his followers to the canons of an
equally primitive art, and recall the important reaction
in wliirh was begotten Arnold's |)oetry of doubt, the
Oxford Movement also assumes importance as affecting
298 THE ENGLISH LYRIC
certain modes of lyrical poetry. With the latter years
of Victoria came the poetry of empire, the logical con-
tinuance of a variety of the art of individual expression,
almost as old as the language, although only latterly,
since Tennyson, prevailingly lyrical. While lastly, there
remains also with us the insistent poetry of the Celtic
revival, youngest of the daughters of romance, a trifle
forward at times and of no such mysterious ancestry,
when all has been said, as she would mystify us into
believing.
It is a commonplace of the latest review of the latest
volume of verse, whether English or American, to deplore
the decay of poetry among us and to ask : " Now Tennyson
is gone and Browning, Swinburne and Meredith too, what
more is there ever for us to hope for in poetry?" Yet
among English speaking nations, never before has poetry
been more generally read or more prevalently printed in
the magazines of the moment and in new volumes, court-
ing more permanent preservation. This diffusion of an
interest in poetry has bettered the technique of our versi-
fiers, while keeping their art more or less along the beaten
path of accepted standards. It has made poetry popu-
lar, if it has lowered somewhat our literary standards.
Whether our greater English poets are more admired
than read is a recurrent academic question. Perhaps, if
they were more carefully pondered, fewer would attempt
with easy conscience their difficult art. As it is, nearly
everybody now writes verses (they are almost as com-
mon as short stories) ; and what is more, nearly everybody
CONCLUSION 299
prints them. The lyrical address to flower, beast, sunset, :
or season, each of these things vocal and solicitous to
teach unhappy man some fine lesson or other, the senti-
mental or humorous poem of childliood, the tender lyric
of regret for a fair maid who died young or married the
market-gardener — who does not know these things and, .
recognizing them, read anything else? Even worse than
these is the solemn injunction as to the white man's duty
to go out somewhere and civilize some one of a darker
complexion at the point of a gun, or the inspired vision,
prayer, or what not that ought to be forbidden, like pro-
fanity, for its incessant calling on the name of God in vain.
These things nearly any one can turn out now in con-
temporary England, or in contemporary America, Canada,
or Australia for that matter, in facile rime and with a
requisite precision as to the number of syllables: and in
some places our taste has not sufficiently progressed for
the majority of us to prefer silence. None the less, with
the work of the poets enumerated in this chapter before
us — to say nothing here of that wide outer empire of
song that so far exceeds the limits of English {)oIitical
dcmiinion — despair as to the future of poetry in the Eng-
lish tongue is pn'poslerous. Our poetry, like our religion,
is apt to adjust itself but slowly to the changes in our
social and j)oIitical conditions. Art must ever follow after
nature, and in the race art runs, like religion once more,
in the gyves of precedent and convention. Our very rebels
in poetry turn a half-averted face backward to the past
of Greece, the Renaissance, and their own England, and
SOO THE ENGLISH LYRIC
carry with them an ever-lengthening chain that binds
them to the precious literary traditions of the race. Thus
it is that that past becomes a warranty of the future of
our art; and the art of the lyrist remains, like the gods,
ever young and never dying.
THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY
/<c /:.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following list of books incliulcs some of the more import-
ant works that treat specifically of the lyric, or of the English
lyric in general and in specific periods. Anthologies of English
poetry, which commonly contain critical matter, are grouped
correspondingly. For further bibliographical information and
especially for the bibliographies of individual poets, the reader
is referred to the works constituting the first group of the fol-
lowing list.
A. BlBLIOGR.\PIllES AND WoUKS CONTAINING B1BLIOGRAPHIE8
OF THE LyuIC
.^ Carpenter, F. I., Outline Guide to the Sludi/ of English Lyric
Poetry, Chicago, 1897. (A helpful bibliography up to its
date.)
Chambers, E. K., and Sidgwick. F., Early Engli.th Lyrics, Amor-
ous, Divine, Moral, and Trivial, 1907. (Contains a valuable
bibliography of MS. ami printed sources, and critical ma-
terial.)
Erskine, J., The Elizabethan Lyric, 190.'}. (Columbia University
Tln'sis; contains an excrllcnt bil)liogra|)liy.)
Gaylcy, C. M..ain! Scott, F. N.,/l« Introduction to the Methods
and Materials of Litrrary Criticijim, 1899. (Contains much
matter in<idciilally touching the lyric.)
Mil(;.s. A. H., The Poets and tlw Poetry of the Century, 12 vols.,
n. d. (Contains nnich valuable bibliographical material,
though unsyslematieally arraiif^ed.)
Morlev, H.. EnijU.sh Writers, 1887 189.">, 11 vols. (Contains gotnl
bii;liographics up to the time of King James.)
304 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reed, E. B., English Lyrical Poetry from its Origins to the Present
Time, 1912. (Contains a useful bibliography, especially of the
earlier periods.)
Ward, A. W., and Waller, A. R., The Cambridge History of Eng-
lish Literature, Cambridge, 1907 — , 9 vols, to date. (Import-
ant alike for the text and the valuable bibliographies.)
B. 1. Works in which the Lyric is treated at Large for
ITS Form, its Nature, or its Place in Literature
* Alden, R. M., An Introduction to Poetry, N. Y., 1909. (An
exceedingly useful compendium.)
Benard, C, La PoStique par W. F. Hegel, Paris, 1855.
^ Bradley, A. C, Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909.
' Brooke, S. A., Theology in the English Poets, 1874.
Brunetiere, F., L Evolution de la PoSsie Lyrique, Paris, 1895.
»^' Brunetiere, F., Victor Hugo, Revue des Deux Mondes, April
15, 1902. (A discussion of the lyric is involved.)
Coleridge, S. T., Biographia Litcraria, 1817.
X Combarieu, J., Les Rapports de la Musique et de la Poesie, Paris,
1894.
A Corson, H., A Primer of English Verse, Boston, 1893.
Courthope, W. J., A History of English Poetry, 1895-1910, 6 vols.
Dallas, E. S., The Gay Science, 18G6.
yGayley, C. M., and Young, C. C, The Principles and Progress
of English Poetry, 1904.
■^ Gildersleeve, B. L., ed. Pindar, 1885. (Introduction on the Ode.)
/ Guest, E., History of English Rhythms, 1882. (Now largely
superseded, first published in 1838.)
Gummere, F. B., The Beginnings of Poetry, 1901. (A learned,
full, and scholarly discussion of a difficult subject.)
Gummere, F. B., A Handbook of Poetics, Boston, 1885. (A
valuable compendium.)
Gummere, F. B., Originality and Convention in Literature, Quar-
terly Review, Jan., 1906,
BIBLIOGRAPHY 305
Gumey, E., The Poicer of Sound, 1880. (An important discussion
of the relations of music to poetry.)
Hazlitt, W., Lectures on the English Poets, 1819.
^'Hegel, G. W. F., Msthdik, in Werlce, vol. x, Berlin, 1833-48.
(The part concerning the lyric has been well translated by
Benard, q. v. above.)
X^ Henderson, T. F., Scottish Vernacular Literature, 1900.
-^ Hepple, N., Lyrical Forms in English, Cambridge, 1911.
^ Hood, T., Practical Guide to English Versification, otherwise The
Rhymester, ed. by "Arthur Penn " [Brander Matthews], N. Y.,
188^2.
• Jacobowski, L.. Die Anfiinge der Poesic, 1891. (A clever and per-
verse attempt to prove the priority of the Lyric over other
kinds of poetry.)
Jusserand, J. J., Ilistoire LiftSraire du Pewple Anglais, Paris,
1895-1904, 2 vols. English translation, 1895.
-<r Kastner, L. E., Thomas Lodge as an Imitator of the Italian Pods,
Modern Language Review, ii, 1900-07.
-^Lanier, S., The Science of English Verse, 1890.
y Lewis, C. M., T/ie Principles of English Verse, 1906.
-Mill, J. S., Poetry and its Varieties, in "Dissertations and Dis-
quisitions," ed. 188iJ.
Murray, (iilbert. What English Poetry may learn from the Greek,
Atlantic Monthly, Sept., \\)\^l\ reprinted in "Essays and
Studies by Members <if^h«' English Association," 1912.
MuM's Library, The. (Contains the following jjocts, with intro-
duelions and other critical ^natrrial: Carr;/', by A. \ iiicent,
1899; Cay, by J. Underhill, 189.'}; Coleridge, by R. Garnett,
1898; Vaughan, by E. K. Chambers, 1890; llerrick, by A.
Pollard, 1891; Marmil, by G. A^Aitken, 1892; Wither, by F.
Sidgwick, 1)KI2; Donne, by E. K. Chambers, 1890; KcaUt, by
R. lJri<lgcs, 1K9(;.)
/^Neils(»n. W. A., EssrntiaU <f Portry, Boston. 1912.
Patmore, C, Poems, vol. ii, 1897. (Preface on Ode.)
306 BIBLIOGRAPHY
^ Pattison, M., Essay on the Sonnet, in his ed. of "Milton's Son-
nets," 1888.
Poe, E. A., The Poetic Principle and The Rationale of Verse,
"Poe's Works," ed. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry,
Chicago, 1895, vol. vi.
/^Robertson, J. M., Essays Totvards a Critical Method, 1889.
^T Saintsbury, G., A Uistory of English Prosody from the Twelfth
Century to the Present Day, 1906-10, 3 vols. Historical Man-
ual of English Prosody, 1910. (These are far from satisfac-
tory in the treatment of earlier English verse.)
V Scherer, W., Poetilc (an Essay edited by R. M. Meyer), Berlin,
1888.
V Schipper, J., Englische Metrilc, Bonn, 1881-88. (An excellent
and authoritative work.)
Schipper, J., Grundriss der englischen Metrik, Vienna and Leip-
sig, 1895. English Translation, History of English Versifica-
tion, Oxford, 1910.
Shairp, J. C, Aspects of Poetry, 1882.
Stedman, E. C, The Nature and Elements of Poetry, 1892.
Ten Brink, B., Geschichte der englischen Litteratur, Berlin, 1893.
^ Tomlinson, C, The Sonnet: its Origin, Structure^, and Place in
. Poetry, 1874.
- Veitch, J., The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, Edinburgh,
2 vols., 1887.
^ Walker, H., Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, 1893, 2 vols.
^Walkley, A. B., War and Poetry, Edinburgh Review, July,
1902.
■^ Warton, J., History of English Poetry, from the Ttvelfth to the
close of the Sixteenth Century, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1871, 4 vols.
.'^ Watts-Dunton, T., Poetry, Encyclopaedia Britannica, ed. 1885.
Watts-Dunton, T., Tfie Renascence of Wonder in Poetry, Cham-
bers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature, 1904, vol. ill.
Werner, R. M., Lyric und Lyriker, Hamburg and Leipzig, 1890.
(A rather disappointing work.)
Xw!
BIBLIOGRAPHY 307
Woodberry, G. E., The Appreciation of Literature, 1907. (Espe-
cially the chapter on "Lyrical Poetry.'')
oodberry, G. E., Makers of Literature, 1900.
"^ B. 2. GENER.A.L AXTHOLOGIES OF ENGLISH LyrICAL PoETRY
Anon., The Songs of Scotland, chronologically arranged, Glasgow,
1871. (With a good introduction.)
Arber, E., British Anthologies, 1899-1901, 10 vols., from Dunbar
to Cowper.
Bramley, H. R., and Stanier, J., Christmas Carols New and Old,
1871.
BuUen, A. H., Caroh and Poems from the Fifteenth Century to the
Present Time, 1885.
Caine, T. H., S onne ts of Three Centuries, 1882.
Chalmers, A., TJic Works of the English Poets, 1810, 21 vols.
(The repository of much remembered, and more forgotten
pcK'try.)
Chambers, R., Songs of Scotland Prior to Burns, 1862. (With a
good introduction.)
ChapiK,'!!, W., A Collection of National English Airs, 1838-40.
.Collins, J. C, A Treasury of Minor British Poetry, 189G.
*/Gosse, E., English Odes, with an introduction, 1881.
Grosart, A. IJ., 'J'he various scries and private publications of
this indefatigable editor contjiin the works of many of the
earlier p^x'ts mentioned in this volume, with prefatory com-
ment on <;af:h, usually entitled "Ab inorial Introduction."
ncrd<-y. \S. E., English Lyrics, C/iaucer to Poe, 1340-1S%9,
1897.
Hunt. L.. and Jjrv, S. A., T/peBooJcoftfic^S()T^net, Boston ed. 18C7,
2 vols, fliitnxliirliori on "The Sotmet:its Origin, Structure,
an<l Pla<;e in P(M-fry.")
Johnson. S., Thr H'ork.i (f the Pods (f Great Britain and Ireland,
with prcfac.-H by, IHOO. 8 vols.
Lloyd, M.. Elegies Ancient and Modern, Trenton, 1903.
308 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Locker-Lampson, F., Lyra Elcganiiarum, a Collection of some of
the best Social and Occasional Verse, enlarged ed. by C. Kern-
ahan, 1891. (First published, 1867; an invaluable collection
of its species.)
MacDonald, G., England's Antipkon, 18G6.
Main, D. M., A Treasury of English Sonnets, 1881.
Palgrave, F. T., The Golden Treasury, selected from the Best
Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language, 1882.
Palgrave, F. T., The Treasury of Sacred Song, selected from the
English Lyrical Poetry of Four Centuries, 1889.
Quiller-Couch, A. T., E nglish S onnets, 1910. (With a valuable
introduction.)
Quiller-Couch, A. T., Tfie Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-
1900, 1908.
Shiple.y, O., Carmina Mariana, 1894-1902, 2 vols.
Waddington, S., English Jkmncts by Poets of the Past, 1888.
Ward, T. H., English Poets, 1885, 4 vols. (The prefatory matter
to each poet, by various hands, in this popular work, still
remains of great value.)
C. 1, Works treating the Anglo-Saxon and Middle
English Lyric
Aust, J., Beitrdge zur Gcschichte der mittelenglischen Lyrik,
"Archiv," lxx, 1883.
Brandl, A., Geschichte der altenglischen Literatur, Strassburg,
1908.
Burton, R., Nature in Old English Poetry, Atlantic Monthly,
April, 1894.
Chambers, E. K., The Mediaeval Stage, 1903, 2 vols. (Contains
much of value on the lyric and folk-lyric of the time.)
Chambers, E. K., Some Aspects of the Mediaeval Lyric. Appended,
witli a valuable list of books and notes, to "Early English
Lyrics," 1907.
Crowest, F. J., The Story of the Carol, 1911.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 309
Gummere, F. B., The Popular Ballad, Boston, 1907. "Types of
English Literature."
Heider, O., Untersuchungen zur mittelenglischen erotischen Lyrik
(1250-1300), Halle Dissertation, 1905.
Jusserand, J. J., English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages,
1890. (Contains valuable information on the minstrel and
wandering cleric.)
Neilson, W. A., Origins and Sources of the Court of Love, 1900.
Paris, G., La Littcrature Frangaise au Moyen Age, Paris,
1890.
Paris, G., La poesie au Moyen Age, 2d Series, Paris, 1895.
Patterson, F. A., The Middle English Penitential Lyric, Colum- J^*"**'
hia Thesis, 1911.
Paul, H., Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, Strassburg,
1889. (Contains matter on the form of the Anglo-Saxon lyric
by Ten Brink.)
Schipper, J., Dunbar, sein Lehcn und seine Gedichte, 1884.
Shaq), C. J., English Folk-CaroU, 1911.
Smith, J. H., The Troubadours at Home, 1899.
C. 2. Collections of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English
Lyrical Poetuy
BiiddckfT, K., Altcnglisrhr Dichtnngcn dcs MS. Ilarl. 22-'>S,
Berlin, 1878. (A representative collection of Middle English
lyrical texts.)
ChamlxTS. E. K., an<l Sidgwick, F., Early English Lyrics, 1907.
(S<.'C under tlie first division of this list.)
Chapprli. W., An Arronnt of an UnpublishnI Collrrtiou if Songs
and HuUads by llrnry VIII and his Contemporaries, Archic-
ologia. XLi, part ii, 18(;7. {Sec FlUgel, in Anglia. xii.)
Cook, .\. S., an«l Tinker, C. B., Select Translations from Old Eng-
lish Poetry, Boston. \{){YL
Ellis. G., Specimens of tlu; Early English PocLt, first cd. 1790,
3 vols.
310 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fehr, B., Die Liedcr der MS. Add. 6665, Herrig's Archiv,
cvi, 1901; see also ibid., cvii, and cix.
Fitzgibbon, H. M., Early English Poetry, London, n. d.
Flugel, E., Englische Weinachtslieder axis einer Handschrift
dcs Balliol College zu Oxford. In Forschungen zur deutschen
Philologie, Festgabe fUr Rudolf Hildebran,d, 1894.
Flugel, E., Liedersamvilungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, hesonders
mis der Zeit Heinrich VIII, Anglia, xii, 1889, and xxvi,
1903.
Furnivall, F. J., Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, E. E. T. S., 1867.
Furnivall, F. J., Political, Religious, arid Love Poems, E. E. T. S.,
XV, 1866.
Grein, C. W. M., and Wiilkcr, R. P., BibliotheJc der Angelsdchsis-
chen Poesie, Leipsig, 1894, first published in 1857-58, 2 vols.,
glossary, 2 vols., 1861-64. (This collection contains practically
the whole body of Anglo-Saxon verse. New ed. by R. P.
Wlilker, 2 vols., Kassel, 1883, Leipsig, 1894.)
Hazlitt, W. C, Remains of Early Popular Poetry, 1856, 4 vols.
Horstmann, K., and Furnivall, F. J., Minor Poems of t/ie Vernon
MS., E. E. T. S., xcviii, 1892.
Maitland, J. A. F., English Carols of the Fifteenth Century,
1891.
Morris, R., An Old English Miscellany, E. E. T. S., xux, 1872.
M(jrris, R., and Skeat, W. W., Specimens of Early English,
Oxford, 1898.
Padclford, F. M., Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, Boston, 1907.
(A collection of the poetry of the "courtly makers" of Henry
VIII's time.)
Pancoast, H. S., and Spaeth, J. D., Early English Poems, 1911.
Paris, G., Chansons du XV e Siecle, Societe des Anciens Textes
Frangais, 1875. (Texts.)
Reed, E. B., The Sixteenth Century Lyrics of Add. MS. 18752,
Anglia, xxxiii, 1910.
Rimbault, F., A Little Book of Songs and Ballads, 1851.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 311
Ritson, J., Ancient Songs and Ballads, from the Reign of Ilcnry II
to tfie Revolution, 3d ed., 1877.
Ritson, J., A Select Collection of English So7igs, 1783.
Todd, G. E., Mediaeval Scottish Poetry, Glasgow, 1892, ]
Wright, T., Songs and Ballads, 1860.
Wright, T., Songs and Carols, 1842 and 1856, 2 vols.
Wright, T., Songs and Carols of the XV. Century, Percy Society,
XXIII, 1847.
Wright, T., Specimens of Lyric Poetry, Percy Society, iv, 1842.
D. 1. Works treating of Lyrical Poetry in Tudor and
Stuart Times
I (^ Alscher, R., Sir Thomas Wyatt und seine Stcllung in der Ent- ^
wiclcelungsgeschichte der englischen Litteratur und Verskunst,
1886.
Anon., The Elizabethan Lyric, Quarterly Review, Oct., 1902.
Bapst, E., Deux Gentilshommes-Poctes de la Cour de Henry VIII,
Paris, 1891.
Bee<-hing, II. C, The So nnets of Shakespeare, Boston, 1904. •
(With intnjduction.)
Carpenter, F. I., Thomas Watson s Italian Madrigals Englished, ^
1590, Journal of Germanic Philology, ii, 1898.
Chappcll, W., Old English Poptdar Music, new ed. by H. S.
Wooldri.lgc, 189:5, 2 vols. (First pul)lishcd 18.5.5-59.)
Erskine, J., The Elizabethan Lyric, Columbia Thesis, 1903. (See \.
under Bibliographies.)
Fchse, II., Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, ein Bcitrag zur ^
Gcschichtc drs Pdrarrhismus in England, 1883.
Fletcher, J. B., The lirUgion of licauty in Women, 1911.
Greg, W. W., Pa.itorul Poetry and Pastoral Drama, 1906. (A
valnahlc and authoritative work.)
Hannah, J., The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh with those of Sir j
Henry Walton and other Courtly Poets, new ed., 1892. (Con-
tains valM;il)lf j)r(f.'if(iry niatlcr.)
312 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoelper, F., Die englische Schriftsprache in " TotteVs Miscel-
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I (', Imelmann, R., Zur Kenntnis der vor -Shakes peariscJien Lyrik,
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Lee, S. L., The Sonnet, in "Cambridge History of English Liter-
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Masson, D., Life and Times of Milton, 1859-1880, 6 vols.
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Melton, W. F., The Rhetoric of John Donne's Verse, Baltimore,
1906.
Moorman, F. W., Robert Herrick, a Biographical and Critical
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Moorman, F. W., William Browne; and tfie Pastoral Poetry of the
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/{? Mott, L. F., Tfie System of Courtly Love, Boston, 1896.
'' Oliphant, T., A Short Account of Madrigals, 1836.
Owen, D. E., Relations of tJie Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences to
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Palmer, G. H., The Works of George Herbert, Boston, 1905.
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Price, T. R., The Technic of Shakspere's Sonnets, "Studies in
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Saintsbury, G., History of Elizabethan Literature, 1890.
Schelling, F. E., English Literature during the Lifetime of Shake-
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 313
^ Schelling, F. E., Li^e and Writings of George Gascoigne, Publi-
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■^ ^ Schelling, F. E., Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth, Publications of the University of Pennsj'lvania,
1891.
,/ ,'j Simonds, W. G., Wyatt and his Poems, Boston, 1889.
Symonds, J. A., A Comparison of Elizabethan and Victorian
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Symonds, J. A., Tfie Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love, 1890.
>* Symonds, J. A., Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books, in "In the
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Tappan, E. M., Tlie Poetry of Nicliolas Breton, Publications of
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Traherne, T., Poetical Works, first published by B. Dobell, 1903.
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^ Wmdsch(;ul,K., Die englische IIirtendichtu7ig von 1579 bis 1G25,
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D. 2. Antuologies of Elizabethan and Post-Elizadetiian ^y^
Times
Anson, W. S. W., Elizabet/uin Lyrics, 1905.
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Arber, E., English Reprints, contains "Tottel's Miscellany,"
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814 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Bullen, A. H., England's Helicon, a Collection of Lyrical and
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Bullen, A. H., Lyrics from the Dramatists of the Elizabethan Age,
1892.
Bullen, A. H., Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age,
1887.
Bullen, A. H., More Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Eliza-
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Bullen, A. H., Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, from Romances and
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Bullen, A. H., Shorter Elizabethan Poems, 1903; a rearrangement
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Bullen, A. H., Speculum Amantis, Love Poems from Rare Song-
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Collier, J. P., Lyrical Poems selected from Musical Publications
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Farr, E., Select Poetry, Chiefly Sacred, of the Reign of James I,
1847.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 315
Garrett, E. D., Elizabethan Songs (Introduction by A. Lang),
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Lee, S., Elizabethan Sonnets (a new edition and rearrangement
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Linton, W. J., Rare Poems of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen-
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Oliphant, T., Musa Madrijalesca or a Collection of Madrigals,
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Sandys, E., Festive Songs of tlie Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centu-
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Seccombe, T., see Arber, E., The English Garner.
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E. 1. WonKR TREATING OF LyRICAL PoETRY FROM THE RESTOR-
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Garnett, R., Tlw Age of Drydrn, ](;gO-1700. 1895.
316 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1889.
Gosse, E., The Jacobean Poets, 1894.
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Century, 1853. (Contains some admirable characterization
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Young, E., Discourse on Odes, 1725.
E. 2. Collections of Lyrical Poetry from the Restora-
tion TO THE Rise of the Romantic School
Bullen, A. H., Musa Proterva, Love-Poems of the Restoration
(privately printed), 1889.
/
BIBLIOGRAPHY 317
Dircks, W. H., Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists, an AntJiology of
17th Century Minor Verse, 1891.
Dodsley, R., A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 1758, 6 vols.
Dyce, A., Specimens of British Poetesses, 1827.
Pearch, G., A Collection of Poems, consisting of Valuable Pieces
not inserted in Mr. Dodsley s Collection or puhlislied since, 1775,
4 vols.
F. 1. Works dealing specifically with the Modern Lyric
Archer, W., Poets of the Younger Generation, 1902. (An import-
ant work containing, to its date, the best summary of the
subject.)
Arnold, M., Essays in Criticism, First Scries, 1865; Second Series,
1888; *'0n tlie Study of Celtic Literature," 1895.
Bagehot, W., Literary Studies, 1879.
Benson, A. C, Essays, 189C.
Brandes, G., Naturalism in England, Main Currents in Nine-
teenth Century Literature, 1905.
Brooke, S. A., Four Victorian Poets (Clough, Rossetti, Arnold,
Morris) with an introduction on "The Course of Poetry since
1852," 1908.
Brooke, S. A., Studies in Poetry (Blake, Scott, Keats, Shelley),
1907.
Buchanan, R. ("Thomas Maitland"], The Fleshly School of
Poetry, in Contemporary Rt;vie\v, Oct., 1871.
Buchanan, R., A Look About Literature, 1877. (Contains "Lines
to an Ohl Enemy.")
Cary, E. L., The litmrltw, 1900.
dc Scliricoiirt. H., William lilalce, 1909.
Dowdcri, E., Poetical Feeling for Nature, Contemporary Review,
II, 1800.
Dowdcn, E., Studies in Literature, 17S9-1S77, 1878.
Dowdcri, E., Transcripts and Studies, 1888. (Essay on Victorian
Literature, csjM'cialiy.)
318 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gosse, E., Coventry Patmore, "Literary Lives," 1905.
Gosse, E., A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse, Cornhill
Magazine, July, 1877.
Henley, W. E., Burns : Life, Genius, Achievement, 1898. (Re-
printed from "The Centenary Burns," 1896-97, which con-
tains a complete bibliography.)
Henley, W. E., Views and Reviews, Essays in Appreciation, 1891,
1892, 2 vols.
Herford, C. H., The Age of Wordsworth, 1901.
Kennedy, J. M., English Literature, 1880-1905, London, 1912.
(Altogether negligible.)
Kingsley, C, Burns and his School, 1880.
Le Gallienne, R., Attitudes and Avowals, 1910.
More, P. E., Shelburne Essays, First Series, 1904, contains an
admirable appreciation of Arthur Symons: the "Two Illu-
sions," and two illuminating essays on "The Irish Movement,"
and "The Epic of Ireland." Later volumes contain suggestive
estimates of Elizabethan and Victorian lyrical poetry, such
as Swinburne, Christina Rossetti, Morris, F. Thompson, and
others.
Nicoll, W. R., and Wise, Z. J., Literary Anecdotes of the Nine-
teenth Century, 1895. (Contains "contributions towards a
history of the period.")
Rossetti, D. G., The Stealthy School of Criticism, Athenaeum,
1871.
Rossetti, W. M., The Germ, edited by, 1901. (Contains in the
introduction the authoritative account of the Pre-Raphaelite
beginnings.)
Saintsbury, G., Nineteenth Century Literature, 1780-1895, 1896.
Salt, II. S., Life of Thomson ("B. V."), 1908.
Sharp, E. A., Mrs., William Sharp, a Memoir, 1910. (Import-
ant not only as to Sharp and "Fiona Macleod" but for
other current matters.)
Sharp, W., Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Record and a Study, 1883.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 319
Stedman, E, C, Victorian Poets, 1876.
Symonds, J. A., Essays Speculative and Svggestive, 1890, 2
vols.
Symons, A., Studies in Prose and Verse, 1904.
Sj'mons, A., The Romantic Movement in Emjlish Poetry, 1909.
Walker, H., The Greater Victorian Poets, 1895.
Walker, H., The Literature of the Victorian Era, Cambridge,
1910. (A compendious and valuable work.)
Watts-Dunton, T., Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Article in Encyclo-
paedia Britannica, ninth ed., 1880.
Weygandt, C, Francis Thompson: Poet and Pariah, Alumni
Register, Feb., 1908.
Weygandt, C, George Meredith, The Book News Monthly, July,
1909.
Weygandt, C, A. E. Housman, The Pathfinder, Nov., 1908.
Weygandt, C, Irish Plays and Playwrights, Boston, 1913.
Weygandt, C, The Poetry of A. C. Benson, The Sewaiioe Re-
view, Oct., 190G; The Poetry of Laivrcnce Binyon, ib., July,
190.5; Tlie Poetry of Stephen Phillips, ib., Jan., 1909; 'M. EJ':
The Irish Emerson {George W. Russell), ib., April, 1907;
William IValson and his Poetry, ib., April, 1904.
W(K>dberry, G. E., Swinburne, "Contemporary Men of Letters,"
190.5.
Yeals, W. B., Collected IVor/cs, 1908.8 voh. (N'ol. viii contains
"Iri.sh Poetry," and "Poetry and Tradition.")
F. 2. ANTiioi.<K;ri;.s ok Ninkteknth Ckntukv, Vktohian
AM) CoNTKMI'OIlAJtY I^VKICAI. PoKTUV
Adams, W. 1)., lAittcr-day Lyrics, 1878. (Coiilaiiis "A Note on
Some Foreign Forms of Verse," by Austin Dobsoii.)
Cooke. J., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse, 172S-l'.i()0, I)ui)liii
and lA)ridori. IIIOD.
Cnjkrr, T. ('., The Popular Songs of Ireland. Collected and
annotated, 1839.
320 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Garrett, E. D., Victorian Songs, with introduction by E. Gossc,
Boston, 1895.
Miles, A. H., The Poets and the Poetry of tlie Century, 12 vols.,
n.d. (Contains valuable introductions, biographical and criti-
cal, by various authors.)
Quiller-Couch, A. T., The Oxford Boole of Victorian Verse, 1912.
Rolleston, T. W., and Brooke, S. A., A Treasury of Irish Poetry
in the English Tongue, 1905.
Stedman, E. C, A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895, 1895.
Waddington, S., English Sonnets by Living Writers, 1888.
White, G., Ballades and Rondeaus, 1893, with introduction.
I
INDEX
Adams, Jean, 144.
Addison, Joseph, 128, 134.
Address, the lyrical, 24.
"A. E." See Russell, George Wil-
liam.
iEschylus, 110.
iEsculapius, 268.
Akenside, Mark, 136.
Alexander, Sir William. See Stirl-
ing, Earl of.
Alexandrine, 44.
Ailingham, William, 212, 281.
Anacreon, 74, 90.
Anapests, 125.
Anne of Denmark, 7.5.
Anne, Queen, 124, 125; poetry of
the reign of, 127-131.
ArlHT. E., 50.
Archer, W., 290, 291.
Areopagu.s club, the, 53.
Ariosto, 37.
Aristotle, 1.
Armstrong, John, 136.
Arnold. Sir Ivlwiri, 214.
Arnold, Miitllicw, i:r>, 1.03. 171,
188, 219-221, 222-224, 225-228,
245. 256, 265, 271. 297.
Arnol.l. Dr. Tliomas, 221, 222.
A.scham, Roger, 44.
Auhr, 25.
Aubrey, John, 82.
Austin, Dr. Adam. 144.
Austin, Alfred, 217, 248.
Ayton, Sir Rolxrl, 75, 91.
Ayloun, Williiim I'dmondstounc,
188, 235.
Bacon, Sir Francis, 93.
Baillie, Joanna, 147.
Baillic, Lady Grizel, 143.
Balcarres, Earl of, 144.
Ballade, the, 24; the vogue of, 25;
form of, 29; Chaucer's use of,
29; revival of, 257, 266.
Balladry, 136, 213, 278.
Barhauld, .\nna Lietitia, 148.
Barclay, .\lexander, 32.
Barnes, Barnabe, 52, 62, 64, 93.
Barnes, William, 187, 190, 193,
273.
Barn6eld, Richard, 49, 50, 64.
Barton, Bernard, 168.
Basse, William, 81, 82.
Baudelaire, 290.
Baylcy, Thomas Ilaynes, 107.
Beatrice, 38.
Beattie, James, 130.
Beaumont, Francis, 8.3-85.
B((ld<K-s, Tlionms Loveli, 183,191.
Beethoven, 150.
B.liu, Aph.ira, 121. 122.
Bcnnet, William ('ox, 214.
Benson, Arthur Christopher, 184,
270.
llmuulj, 9.
lirryrrrt, 49.
Bible. 94, 106.
Binyon, Laurenee, 270, 271.
Blackie. .John Stuart. 211.
Bl.uklcck. Thom.is. 144.
Blair. Hubert, 133.
Blake. William. 137. 140-142, 147,
148, 151. 216, 261, 296.
322
INDEX
Blanchard, Laman, 185.
Blount, Martha, 127.
Bodenham, John, 49.
Boileau, 124.
Boleyn, George, 40.
Bolton, Edmund, 57, 58.
Bowles, William Lisle, 86, 132, 151,
206.
Boyle, Elizabeth, 61.
Bradlaugh, C, 248.
Brandl, A., 9, 32.
Breton, Nicholas, 43, 47, 49, 93,
100, 294.
Bridgeman, Sir Orlando, 98.
Bridges, Robert, 257, 264, 266-
268, 270.
Brome, Alexander, 104.
Brome, Richard, 83, 91, 102.
Bronte, Emily, 209, 281.
Brooke, A. S., 282.
Brooke, Christopher, 81, 82.
Brough, Robert, 215.
Brougham, Lord, 170.
Brown, Oliver Maddox, 261.
Brown, Thomas Edward, 214.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 123.
Browne of Tavistock, William, 73,
81, 82, 85, 93, 106.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 86,
203, 206-208, 213, 256.
Browning, Robert, 193, 200-206,
217, 220, 221, 234, 245, 256, 262,
266, 274, 297, 298.
Bryan, Sir Francis, 40.
Buchanan, Robert, 232, 252-256,
270, 271, 287, 288.
Buckinghamshire, John SheflBeld,
Duke of, 102, 121.
Bulwcr, Edward, Lord Lytton, 191,
192, 214.
Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, 120.
Burns, Robert, 132, 140, 144-148,
151, 158, 166, 167, 183, 190, 273,
281, 296.
Burton, Robert, 107.
Butler, Samuel, 5, 119.
Byrd, William, 51.
Byrom, John, 136.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 132,
153, 169-173, 179. 182, 183, 186,
189, 206, 228, 296.
Byronism, 170, 171, 189, 192, 196,
227.
Credmon, 9.
Calverley, Charles Stuart, 217, 256.
Campbell, Thomas, 132, 164, 165,
168, 183, 185.
Campion, Thomas, 45, 70, 73, 74,
85, 118, 216, 268, 294.
Canning, George, 167.
Canzon, 46, 49, 51, 52.
Carew, Thomas, 83, 88, 89, 91, 92,
101, 102, 108, 112, 120, 161, 295.
Carey, Henry, 128.
Carlyle, Thomas, 158, 203, 210,
215, 220, 221.
Carol, 20-22.
Carpenter, F. I., 61.
Carroll, Lewis, 215, 217.
Cartwright, William, 83, 91, 97,
105, 112.
Gary, E. L., 229.
Gary, Sir Lucius, 79.
Catullus, 74, 77, 90, 216.
Cavalier poets, 88-93, 104, 105,
119.
Celtic Revival, the, 181, 212. 246.
254, 204, 279-286, 291, 298.
Chambers, E. K., 12, 18.
Chanson a persnnnagcs, 25.
Cliannon d'aventure, 24.
Cliant royal, 258.
Chapman, George, 62, 70. 85, 86.
INDEX
323
Charles I, 85, 88-90, 93, 99, 104,
105, 294.
Charles II, 100, 102, 106, 112, 115,
120.
Chartism, 263.
Chatterton, Thomas, 137-138, 140,
148, 261, 296.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 14, 25, 28-30,
32, 36, 106, 292.
Chopin, 156.
Churchill, Charles, 136.
Clare, John, 184.
Classical influences in the lyric, 40,
45, 68, 74, 77, 106, 108, 196, 226,
227, 239, 253, 260, 271, 272.
Classicality, 77, 113, 114, 196, 226,
227, 295, 296.
Clerk. Sir.Iolin. 144.
Clough, .Vrtliur Ilu«h, 220, 221,
222-227i»256.
"Cockney Schocjl," the, 179.
Coleman, Georf^c, 167.
Coleridge, Hartley, 185.
Coleriilgc, Samuel Taylor, 3, 148-
152, l.>5~157. 158, 168, 183, 192,
228, 280. 297.
Coicriilge, Sara, 168.
Collins, J. C. 122.
Collin.s, Mortimer, 217.
rollins, William, 134-137.
Complrijul, the, 30.
"f\>nccit," the, 54; defined, 55;
|)opulari/,<-d l>y Sidney. 55; its
used by Donne and Southwell,
55, 5(t; ing'-tiious, of Cowley. 5(i,
57. 104; referahle to I'ctrarch,
57; Carolan u.se nt the, 8.3, 95. 9(1.
103; di.Hrci)ul.- of. ]()i. 112. 113;
exce.s.sea of the. not a(-<'outital>ie
for the cla-ssieal reaction, 113;
u.s«' of, in fonfrmporary poetry.
276. 278, 296.
Congreve, William, 104, 123-124.
Constable, Henry, 49, 60, 62, 93.
Converso, 51.
Cornwall," "Barry. See Procter.
Cornysshe, William, 35.
Cory, William, 216.
Cotton, Charles, 100, 101. 104, 118,
267.
Couplet, the decasyllabic, 114, 125,
206.
Courtoisie, 13, 14.
Cowley, .Abraham, 50, 83, 102-104,
105, 112, 118, 119, 123. 131, 213.
Cowper, William, 132, 138-139,
151, 193.
Crabbe, George, 139, 149, 167, 186,
192, 253.
Craik, Dinah Maria, 209.
Crashaw, Richard, 83, 94-99, 102,
105, 107, 112, 113, 137, 276,
295.
Crawford, Robert, 143.
Cromwell, Oliver, 101, 110.
(,"unningliam, .Mhin, 167.
Cyncwulf, 10.
Cynicism, 7, 68, 84, 99. 120, 290.
Dactylics, 186, 224.
Dani.l, Samuel, 45, 60-03, 70, 81,
85, 294.
Dante. .37, .38, 231.
Darlcy. (Jeorge, 183, 192. 281.
Darwin. Charles. 221.
Darwin, Krasnms, 1(»2, 147, 151.
Davtiianl. Sir William, 1(15, 114.
115.
Da%id.son. John, 204, 265, 270. 271,
27H. 27!).
Davi<s. Sir .lolm, 62.
Davi.s, Thomas. 211. 212. 281.
Drhnl. il.
Debu.s.sy, 156.
324
INDEX
"Decadents," the, 247, 264, 289,
290.
Defoe, Daniel, 286.
Dekker, Thomas, 70, 71, 83.
Delia Crusca, 165.
De Quincey, Thomas, 164.
Dcrmody, Thomas, 165.
Descort, 25.
Desportes, 61.
Devereux, Lady Penelope, 59.
Dibdin, Charles, 165-167.
Dickens, Charles, 215, 286.
Diogenes, 6.
Dixon, Richard Watson, 245.
Dobell, Sidney, 188, 215, 235.
Dobson, Austin, 125, 217, 256-
258, 266.
Dodsley, Robert, 122, 128, 136.
Domett, Alfred, 211.
Donne, John, 54, 55, 62, 63, 67-70,
76, 80, 82, 83, 84, 89, 93, 95, 96,
99, 103, 113, 142. 161, 275, 276,
294.
Dorset, Earl of, Charles Sackville,
120.
Doubleday, Thomas, 168.
Douglas, Gawain, 32.
Dowden, Edward, 262.
Dowland, John, 51, 70, 74.
Dowson, Ernest, 264. 289, 290.
Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings, 188,
287.
Drama, 2; songs of the, 83, 84, 107,
190-192.
Drayton, Michael, 48, 49, 60, 61,
63, 70, 71, 73, 81, 287.
Drummond, William, 73-75, 294.
Drury, Mistress Elizabeth, 68, 161.
Dryden, John, 102, 104, 105, 106,
112-114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122,
12.3, 125. 128. 295, 296.
Du Bartas. 71.
Dufferin, Lady, 209.
Dunbar, William. 30-32, 293.
Dyer, John, 133.
Edwards, Richard, 42.
Edward IH, 28.
Eglinton," "John, 285.
Eleanor of Guienne, 13.
Elegy, 67, 82, 198, 207, 225. 292.
Eliot, George, 209, 221.
Elizabeth, Queen, 62, 93.
Elizabethan revival, 18.3, 191, 192.
Elliott, Ebenezer, 167.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 221, 284.
Empire," "poets of, 264, 287, 288,
298.
Epic, 9, 141, 239.
Epigram, 7, 78, 80, 82, 90, 162, 163,
164, 269.
Epitaph, 79, 82, 163. "*•
Epithalamium, 67. 84-86.
Erasmus, 33.
Erskine, Harry, Earl of Rosslyn,
144.
Essex, Robert, Earl of, 70.
Est, Michael, 51.
Etheredge, Sir George, 119. 121.
Fairfax, Lord, 100.
Falconer, William, 136.
Fardyng, Thomas, 35.
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 211.
Fergusson, Robert, 145, 281.
Ficino, 47.
"Fiona Macleod." See Sharp, Wil-
liam.
FitzGerald, Edward, 168, 195.
Flatman, Thomas, 119.
Flecknoe, Richard, 122.
Fletcher, Giles, 81.
Fletcher, the younger, Giles, 81.
Fletcher, J. B., 38, 59.
INDEX
325
Fletcher, John, 84., lOG, 107.
Fletcher, Phineas, 81.
Flugel. E., 34.
Folk-poetry, 11, 12, 16, 19-21. 94,
143. 145, 185.
Ford, John, 85.
Francis, St., 27.
Franciscans, 27.
Fraunce, Abraham, 45.
French influences in the lyric, 12-
15, 24, 25, 27, 29, 39, 46, 49, 58,
60, 61, 100, 239, 257. 258.
Frerc, John Ilookham, 167.
Froude. Ilurrcll, 217.
Gamett, R., 191.
Ga.scoigne, George, 42-44, 93.
Gay, John, 128-130.
Geddes, Alexander, 144.
George. King, 127.
Germ, the, 213. 230, 233.
Giffonl, William, 86, 1G5.
Gilbert, William S., 215, 217.
(Jleeman, 9, 1 1.
(iodwin, Mary, 174.
(;<Mtlie, 171.
(Joldsmith. Oliver. 136. 140. 281.
Gongora, 57.
(itKMJwiti, (t.. 82.
(ioogc, HumalM', 44.
Goji.s<-, K.. 102, 104, l.'H, 2I.'{, 2.'57.
2.38. 2fi(i.
Ciowcr, John, 30, 32.
C.rny. Davi.l. 2.j3.
(J ray. Thomas. 132, 134-140, 227.
26.';, 26H. 271.
(Jreenc. Itobert. V.i. 4K, 49. 70,
100.
f;rcviilc, Fulke. 43. 53, 54. 70,
291.
Grimald. Nichf)liLs, 40. 41. 44.
Gummcre. F. M.. 2. 12. Hi.
Habington, William, 86, 95, 99, 101.
Hadrian, 125, 126.
Haflz, 189.
Hake, Thomas Gordon, 210.
Hales, Thomas de, 14, 16.
Halket, George, 143.
Hall, Jo.scph, 5, 28.
Hallam, Arthur, 195, 198.
Hamilton, W'illiam, of Bangour,
143.
Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield,
143.
Handel, 129.
Hardy, Thomas. 273.
Harvey, Gabriel. 43, 45.
Hawes, Stephen, 32.
Hayley, William, 147.
Hazlitt, W., 183.
Heber, Reginald, Bishop, 184.
Hedonism, 89, 90.
Heraans, Felicia Dorothea, 167.
Henley, William Ernest, 145, 258.
259, 200, 264, 266, 270, 271.
Henry H, 13.
Henry VHI, 24, 32. .34-36. 40.
Henryson, Robert, 20, 25, .30.
Herbert, George, 83. 95-98, 112,
184. 295.
Hcrri.k. Robert, 83, 80, 88-91, 94,
101. 102, 105, 112. 117.212,216,
294, 29(i.
HcywocKl, John, 32, .33.
Heywocxl, Thomiis, 8.3.
Hilda. Abl).-ss. 9.
Hinkson. Kiilhcrini' Tynan, 285,
291.
Hogg. James. 147. 1.>H, 1H5, 192,
2.';2. 281.
Homer, I.
Ho<,<i. Thonijus. 185. 180, 192, 21.'>,
25.3.
H(K)k, ThecHlore. 167.
326
INDEX
Hopkins, Gerard, 261.
Hopkins, John, 93.
Hopper, Nora (Mrs. Chesson), 285,
291.
Horace, 77, 258.
Home, Richard Henry, 183, 190,
193.
Hoskins, Sir John, 91.
Houghton. See Milnes, Richard
Monckton.
Housman, Albert Edward, 264,
272, 273.
Housman, Laurence, 26l!, 277-279,
Howitt, Mary, 167.
Hrothgar, 9.
Hugo, Victor, 240.
Hume, Tobias, 51, 74.
Hunnis, William, 42.
Hunt, Holraan, 229.
Hunt, Leigh, 168, 169, 179, 192.
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 221.
Hyde, Douglas, 282.
Hymns, 14, 46. 107, 139.
Idyl, 49.
Impressionism, 228.
Ingelow, Jean, 209, 210.
Irish poetry. 189, 190, 211-212,
281-286.
Italian influences in the lyric, 37-
39, 41, 47, 49, 50-52, 59, 60, 68,
69, 75, 106. 109, 239, 266.
James I, 30, 73, 75, 81, 85, 87, 88,
93, 105, 294.
James IV. of Scotland. 31, 32, 293.
Johnson. Lionel, 279-281, 285.
Johnson, Samuel, 136, 137, 139,
140, 148.
Jones, Ebenezer, 215.
Jones, Ernest Charles, 215.
Jones. Robert, 51, 74.
Jonson, Ben, 41, 50. 63. 74, 77-80,
82-86, 88, 89, 91, 93, 97, 101,103,
108. 113, 114, 179, 294-296.
Juvenal, 77.
Kastner. L. E.. 60.
Keats, John, 107. '149. 169, 175,
178-183, 185, 186. 191. 196. 203,
226, 228, 232, 235. 246. 247. 266,
272, 280. 296.
Keble, John, 184, 217-219. 222.
Kemble, Fanny. 208.
Killigrew, Anne, 116.
King, Bishop Henry, 91. 99. 105,
122.
Kingsley, Charles. 215. 221. 251.
Kipling, Rudyard, 254, 264, 265,
286, 288.
Lai, 25.
Lamb, Charles, 135, 148. 160, 161,
166, 168, 179, 183, 193, 267.
Landor, Walter Savage, 125, 148,
162-164, 166, 193, 203, 240, 209.
Lang, Andrew, 257, 266.
Lanier. Nicholas, 117.
Lansdowne, Lord, 121.
Latin verse, influence of, 14, 19, 27,
33.
Laura, 38.
Lawes, Henry, 117.
Lawes, William, 117.
Lee. Anthony, 40.
Lee, Sir S., 59, 60.
Lee-Hamilton, Eugene, 261.
Le Gallienne, Richard, 250, 291.
Leigh, Henry S., 217.
Leighton. Robert, 216.
Leyden, Dr. John, 168.
Lindsay, Lady Anne, 144.
Linton. William James. 216.
Lloyd, Charles, 160.
INDEX
327
Locker-Lampson, F., 7, 127, 217.
Lockhart, John Gibson, 184.
Lodge, Thomas, 43, 49, 61, 64.
Logan, John, 145.
Lovelace, Richard, 91, 99, 101, 104,
112.
Lowe, John, 144.
Lullaby, 21, 22.
Luther, Martin, 34.
Lydgate, John, 30, 32.
Lyly, John, 43.
LjTiche, Richard, 56.
Lyric, the, defined, 1-8; song qual-
ity and subjectiveness, of, 1 ; and
the drama, 1-4; rhythm and, 2,
3; unity an essential of, 4, 5;
bre%ity, universality of, 5, 6;
range of, 6-8; anfl the epigram, 7,
8; an element in .\nglo-Saxon
poetry, 9-11; relation of folk-
songtothe, 11, li; a! trourvre nnd
troubadour, 12-14; the mediaeval,
12-30; in Tudor Kngland, 31-72;
Proven(,al and Italian influences
on, 37-39; clii.ssical influences on,
40, 45; metres and forms of Eliza-
bethan, 44-53; si)iriLiuul variety
of^tte Elizalx'than, 52-72; to be
set to music, 50-52, 73, 74; devo-
tional, of the reign, 54; "con-
ceit" and <jther superfiri.ilities of,
54-58; under the earlier Stuarts,
73-111; re.sfriclive iiifliieiiceson,
HO, HI ; in drama and masfjiie, H3-
80; theCarolan religious, 87-99;
of the Ciivaliir \hm-\s, 99 104; of
Milfon, 107-1 1 1 ;anexpressioti of
pcrsrmality, 114; at the Restora-
tion, 112-123; .lecline of, in the
age of .\nne, 125 131; j'lmven-
tionalily of. in the eighteenth
century, 1.36, 137; forerunners of
the romantic re\'ival in, 139-148;
in Scotland, 142-147; and the
romantic re\'ival, 149-193; the
Wordsworthian process,and reach
in, 152-155; the sentimental,
165, 166; of patriotism and war,
165, 168, 187, 188, 190, 197, 215,
216, 235, 287, 288; Byron and, of
eloquence, 171, 172; Shelley and,
of rhapsody, 174-177; Keats and
the, of the senses, 179-182; Eliza-
bethan revival in drama and, 183;
the modern religious, 184, 199,
207, 216, 218-220, 233-234,-275,
277; of social indignation and re-
form, 185-187, 207, 215, 253-
255; historical and patriotic, 187,
188, 211, 216, 235; of the reign
of Victoria, 194-263; of Tenny-
son, 197, 198; Browning and the
extension of the sphere of, 200-
202; diffusion of the Victorian,
214-217; and the Oxford Move-
ment, 217-228; of the poetry of
doubt,220-222; thepre-Rapliael-
ite, 229-234; Swinburne's range
and variety in, 240-245; sus-
tained power in, 252; revival of
French forms in, 257, 258; in the
last years of Victoria, 258-263;
of contemporary Wordsworth-
ians, 265-274; complex elements
in tlie modern, 267, 270-272;
tiic rhapsodisl, 275 277; in tiic
Celtic revival, 280-280; of the
"p(H-ts of enii)in-," 2H7, 2HH: <.f
"decadence," iH'.), 2!>(); minor
conti-mixiraries in, 290, 291;
vogue of the e<inletiij)i>rary, 298;
Hunnnary of tlie histury of, 291-
300; future and permanency of,
.300. And .see Toelrv.
328
INDEX
Lyrical Ballads, 118, 151, 152,
164.
Macaronic verse, 15.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington,187,
188.
Macdonald, George, 216.
Mackay, Charles, 215.
Maclean, Letitia Elizabeth (Lan-
don), 1G8.
Madrigal, 50, 51.
Maeterlinck, 284.
Magic, 140, 155, 156, 158, 159, 181,
182, 210.
Maitland," "Thomas. See Bu-
chanan, 232.
Mallet, David, 143.
Mangan, James Clarence, 187, 189,
190, 211, 281.
Mant, Richard, Bishop, 184.
Marenzio, 51.
Marinism, 57, 107.
Marino, 57.
Marlowe, Christopher, 36, 47, 83,
86, 247.
Marston, Philip Burke, 246.
Martial, 77.
Marvell, Andrew, 100, 101, 104,
119.
Masefield, John, 288.
Mason, William, 136.
Masque, lyrics of the, 85, 86.
Massey, Gerald, 188, 215.
Massinger, Philip, 85.
Maurice, Frederick Denison, 221.
May, Thomas, 117.
Maync, John, 144.
Mazzini, 240.
Melton, W. F., 80.
Meredith, George, 248, 250-252,
264, 288, 298.
Mesihi, 189,
Metaphysical poetry, 69, 83, 161,
275.
Meynell, Alice Thompson, 274, 291.
Mill, J. S., 221.
Millais, John, 229.
Milman, Henry Hart, 184.
Milncs, Richard Monckton, 188,
210, 217.
Milton, John, 84, 95, 100, 101, 102,
104-112, 116, 117, 130, 131, 134,
175, 265, 267, 268, 271, 295, 296.
Minot, Lawrence, 28.
Minstrel, 11, 17, 18, 27, 34, 184,
293.
Miscellanies, poetic, 40-43, 44, 49,
52, 117, 118, 148.
Money-Coutts, Francis Burdett,
291.
Montgomery, James, 184.
Montrose, James Graham, Marquis
of, 105.
Moore, Thomas, 165, 166, 172, 192,
281.
Moore, T. Sturge, 264, 272.
More, Hannah, 147.
More, P. E., 295.
More, Sir Thomas, 33.
Morison, Sir Henry, 103.
Morlcy, Thomas, 51.
Morris, Lewis, 214.
Morris, William, 229, 230, 236-
238, 245, 246, 262.
Moschus, 108.
Motherwell, William, 188.
Munday, Anthony, 44, 49.
Music, in poetry, 1, 16, 17, 35, 70,
73, 74, 138, 156, 165-167, 276,
283, 294.
Myers, Frederick, 246.
Naime, Caroline Oliphant, Lady,
147.
INDEX
329
Napoleon, 170.
Nash, Thomas, 15, 59, 70, 71.
Nature in poetry, 16, 98, 100, 130,
131; revival of the cult of, 133,
135, 139, 141, 149; the Words-
worthian cult of, 153-155, 164,
107, 175. 179-181, 184, 19G, 224,
242, 243, 251, 252, 267. 209, 278.
Neilson, W. A., 295.
Newholt, Henry, 264, 288.
Newman, Cardinal, 217-219. 221,
234, 297.
Noel, Roden, 246.
Norris, John, of Bemerton, 123.
Norton, Caroline, 209.
Noyes, Alfred, 236, 288.
Occleve, Thomjis, 30.
Octo-syllabics, 49, 50, 161. 181.
Ode, 48, 50, 52, 71, 79, 103, 104,
119, 122, 124, 134-130. 213.
Oldham, John, 119, 122.
O'Kecfe. John, 167.
O'Neill. Moira, 285.
Orrery. Earl of. 119.
O'ShauKhncssy, Arthur. 246.
Oxitian, 141.
Oxford, Pvdward de Verc, Earl of.
42, 70.
Oxford, or Traetarian, Movement,
184, 217-219, 221. 222, 230, 261.
274, 294.
Pmhlford, F. iM., 19. 25, 39.
I'aKan, I.sohcl or Til)l)ic, 144.
Palfjrave. Franci.s Turner. 130. 214.
Pahnode, 57.
Paris, (Jiisldp, 14.
Parncll, Tliomjts, 1,30.
Pu.sloral. the, fikshion, 45-52; 08;
revivid of, 100; 100, 129.
raslnnrdlc, 2K 25,
Pater, Walter, 231.
Patmore, Coventry, 212-214, 256,
264, 274.
Paton, Sir J. Noel, 234.
Pattison, Mark, 110.
Pavy, Salathiel, 79.
Payne, John, 261.
Peacock, Thomas Love, 185. 192,
193.
Peele, George. 43. 49.
Pembroke. Countess of, 82.
Pembroke, William, Earl of, 82.
Percy, Bishop Tiiomas, 136.
Petrarch, 37-40, 57, 59, 74, 293.
Petrarchism, 33, 37-39, 50-52, 54,
57, 59, 60, 68, 69. 75. 109, 113,
293, 296.
Philips, Ambrose, 129.
Philii)s, Mistre-ss Katherine, 119.
Phillips, Stephen, 266. 271, 272.
Pindaric Ode. See Ode.
Plalonism, 38, 46, 59, 123. 293.
Playfonl, Henry. 117.
Poc-. Edgar Allen. 190.
Poetry, place of the lyric in, 1, 2;
and ver.se, 2, 3; defined, 3; and
didacticism, 4, 5; cj)ic and ele-
giac quality of Anglo-Saxon, 9-
12; folk, 11, 12, 16, 19-21, 143;
of the art of love, 12-15; of the
minstrel. 16-18; of court and
cloister, 20-30; convenlionalily
of medi;eval. 31; a diversion of
rhetoric. 32; of the court of
Henry VIII. 34-36; lh<- n<\v. of
Wyalt and Surrey. ;J7 41; Ital-
ian influence on Engli.sh. 87-41.
47, 49. 51. ,'i2, 5.S, (;(», (IH, 69, 75.
10(i, 109; of the Klizaix-llian mis-
cellany, 41-43; meu.sures of Eliza-
iMlhim, 44, 4.'. 50. 51: pastoral,
4.i-52. OH, 100, 106, 129; of the
330
INDEX
Elizabethan sonnet, 58-67; of
Spenser, Donne, and Jonson, con-
trasted, 75-78; later pastoral, 81 ;
Elizabethan and Carolan, con-
trasted, 86-88; split between
sacred and secular, 88, 89; de-
votional, 89-99; of gallantry,
99-101, 116, 119-123; Pattison
on, 110, 111; Jonson the source
of, Augustan ideals in, 113, 114;
later miscellanies of, 117, 118; of
the age of Anne, 125-131 ; revival
of, with Thompson, 133-139;
religious, 136, 137, 184, 199, 207,
216, 218-220, 233-234, 275, 277;
forerunners of the romantic re-
vival in,139-148; of the romantic
revival, 149-183; Wordsworth-
ian theory and practice in, 149-
155; magic in, 155-159; taste
and reserve in, 163, 164; the By-
ronic pose in, 170, 171; of revolt
and rhapsody, 170-172, 174, 178,
240; the cult of beauty in, 178-
182, 196, 198; the "Cockney
School" in, 179; Elizabethan re-
vival in, 183, 190, 191; of social
reform, 185, 187, 207, 215, 253-
255; patriotic and war, 187, 188,
211, 216, 235; of rural life, 190,
272; of taste, 196-199; of politics
and philosophy, 199, 200, 241,
242, 254, 255, 269, of the via
media, 199, 219; woman in, 206-
210; of Catholicism, 211, 214,
274, 275; diffusion of Victorian,
214-217; of faith, 228, 229; of
doubt, 220-222. 226, 227; and
rationalism, 221, 226; prc-Ra-
phaclite, 229-234; of city and
street, 233, 253, 259, 260, 270,
271, 278, 288; mediffivulism in.
236; influence of Tennyson on,
236, 237; Norse spirit in modern
English, 237; decorative, 238; of
thought and feeling contrasted,
245; later pre-Raphaelite, 245-
247; "decadence" in, 247, 264,
289, 290; of pessimism, 248, 249;
spiritual significance in, 251; of
pure idea, 252; of exotic French
form, 256-258; classification of
contemporary English, 264, 265;
elegiac quality in modern, 269,
272; of the Celtic revival, 280-
286; of "empire," 286-288; mi-
nor, of the present, 291; diffu-
sion of contemporary, 298, 299;
mediocrity in, 298, 299; assured
future of, 299, 300. And see
Lyric.
Poitou, William of, 13.
PoUok, Robert, 184.
Pontuox, Claude de, 61.
Pope, Alexander, 5, 102, 118, 120,
123, 125-130, 132-134, 136, 138,
139, 147, 149, 151, 170, 296.
Poulter's measure, 44.
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 125,
187. 188, 189, 217, 256.
Pre-Raphaelite, Keats presages
the, movement, 181; Tennyson
and the, poetry, 196; Patmore's
relation to the, movement, 213;
defined, 229; the, brotherhood,
230; poets of the, movement,
230-247, 255, 256; introduction
of exotic forms by, poets, 257; in-
fluences in contemporary poetry,
262, 264, 272, 274; influences in
the Nco-Celtic revival, 283, 297.
Pringle, Thomas, 168.
Prior, Matthew, 123-126, 256.
Procter, Adelaide Anne, 209.
INDEX
331
Procter, Bryan Waller, 16G, 1G7,
192.
Provencal poetry, l^-l-t, 37.
Psalms, the, 23, 54, 93.
Purcell, Henry, 117.
Puritanism. 82, 87, 88, 93, 94, 265,
2GG, 271, 295.
Puttenham, George, 37, 40.
Quarles, Francis, 83, 86, 94.
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 291.
Raddiffe, Anne, 1G5.
Radford, Dollie, 291.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 44, 70.
Ramsay, Allan, 136, 143.
Randolph, Thomas, 83, 85, 97.
Rands, William IJrighty, 215.
Raphael, 229.
Renaissance, 36, 38, 68, 75, 80, 81,
109, 149, 295, 297. 299.
" Renaissance of wonder," 149, 297.
Reverdie, 17.
Reynolds, John Hamilton, 185.
"I{liaps(Miist.s," the, 2G4, 274-279.
Rhythm, "the essential fact of
prx-try," 2.
Rich, Wd, 59.
Riddle-s, the Anglo-Saxon, 11.
Robinson, f leiiicnl, 42.
Robinson, .Mary, IIH.
Rmhester, Earl of, .Jnjm Wilmot,
120, 121, 123.
R<K hfnrd. Lord, 40.
Rogers, Samuel, 147, I.Jl, 1H3.
Rolleston, Thorniis Williarn, 282.
Romanticism. l.'iV, 14(1; discussed,
149, 150, 157. 159. 160. 173; the
newer. 22H, 231. 232. 2.37. 263;
the new Celtic, 280, 286. 295,
296.
Rnndruu. 39. 257.
Rondel or roundel, 17, 29, 49, 244,
257.
Roscommon, Earl of, 102, 119.
Ross, Alexander, 144.
Rossetti, Christina, 209, 233, 234.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 86, 210,
229-233, 2.39, 246, 247, 253, 257,
262, 285. 286, 297.
Rossetti, W. M., 230.
Rola or rondel, 17-29.
Roundelay, 49.
Rowlands, Samuel, 71.
Rowley," "Thomas, 138.
Rudyerd, Sir Benjamin, 82,
Ruskin, John, 215, 221, 230, 236,
246.
Russell, George William, — "A.
E.," 284. 285.
Saccharissa (Lady Dorothy Sid-
ney), 114, 115.
Saintsbury, G., 116, 117, 122.
Salt, H. S., 248.
Sandys, George, 95.
Sappho, 1, 90, 208.
Satire, 5, 23, 127, 147, 167, 173.
Savage, Richard. 1.36.
Schclling. V. E.. 45. 58, 113.
Schumann, 156.
Scoj), 1 1 .
Scott, Sir Walter, 117, 1.'37, 159,
160, 162, 164, 183, 187, 188, 192,
22H.
Scott, William Hell, 211, 2.34.
Sedley, Sir Charles, 120-123.
Sclincourl, B.. de. 141.
Srplrtiariii.s, 22, 44.
St'stina. 52.
Shadwcll. ThoniMs. 122.
Shakespeare, William. .3, 41, 4H, 50,
01 , 63-67, 70, 74. 77. 82-84. 89.
101. 115. i:!l. 145. 147. 19(1. 232,
3S2
INDEX
247, 250, 280, 286, 293, 294,
2»(J.
Sharp, William ("Fiona Mac-
leod"), 229, 24G, 2G4, 285, 286.
Sharp, Mrs. William, 286.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 97, 107, 137,
149, 169, 173-178, 182, 183, 190,
203, 228. 241, 242, 248, 252, 276,
280, 296.
Shenstone, William, 133.
Sherborne, Sir Edward, 105, 117.
Sheridan, Richard Brinslcy, 208,
281.
Shirley, James, 85, 86, 117, 118.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 42, 43, 45, 47,
49, 51-58, 60, 01, 64, 70, 75, 80,
82, 89, 114, 293.
Sigerson, Dora (Mrs. Shorter),
281, 285, 291.
Skeat, W. W., 138.
Skelton, John, 30, 32.
Skinner, John, 144.
Skipsey, Joseph, 216.
Skirving, Adam, 144.
Slender, Cousin Abraham, 41.
Smart, Christopher, 137.
Smith, Alexander, 188, 235.
Smith, Charlotte, 86, 132.
Smith, Horace, 167.
Smith, James, 167.
Somerset, Edward, 40.
Song, an essential element of the
lyric, 1; the folk, 11, 12, 16, 19-
21, 94, 143, 145, 185; medieval,
12-35; books of, 43, .51, 73, 74,
143, 145, 165, 166; pastoral, 47,
48; Elizabethan gift of. 70-72;
writers of, 73-74: in drama and
masque, 83-86, 116, 117, 129;
later books of, 117, 118; of Blake,
140; Scottish traditional and
other, 143-145. 158.185; popular
pre- Victorian, 165-167; in drama
of the Elizabethan revival, 190-
192; of Tennyson, 197; of Brown-
ing, 204-206; of social reform and
unrest, 215, 216; sacred, 219;
revolutionary, 240; power of, in
Thompson, 276; patriotic, 287,
289.
Song-book, the Elizabethan, 51, 73,
74, 117, 118, 143; revival of the,
165, 166.
Sonnet, the, introduced from Italy,
37; influences of Dante and Pe-
trarch on, 38-40, 41, 75;tho Eliz-
abethan, 52, 58-65, 67, 68; on
religious themes, 61 ,62; of Shake-
speare, 64, 65, 67, 71; in Stuart
times, 75, 86, 94; emancipation
of the, by Milton, 109-111; a
criterion of poetic spirit, 131; re-
vival of, 131-1.33, 136, 139; the
Wordsworthian, 152, 153, 168,
183, 185; of Keats, 181; of Mrs.
Browning, 208; of Rossetti, 232,
233; of war, 235; 244, 266.
Sophocles, 110.
Southerne, Thomas, 127.
Southey, Caroline Bowles, 167.
Southey, Robert, 160, 192.
Southwell, Father, 54-56, 93.
"Spasmodic school," the, 215, 235.
Spenser, Edmund, 42, 43, 46-49,
61, 64, 70, 76, 81, 82, 85, 106-
108, 114, 133. 134, 175, 196. 265,
271, 280. 293.
Spiritualism, 251, 268, 271, 275.
Stanihurst, Ri<hard, 45.
Stanley, Thomas, 97, 99, 105.
Stanza, 80, 133.
Stephen, James Kenneth, 217.
Sterling, John, 210.
Sternhold, Thomas, 93,
INDEX
333
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 215, 258-
260, 281.
Stillingfleet, Benjamin, 132.
Stirling. Earl of, 73, 75.
Strong, Charles, 168.
Suckling, Sir John, 99-101. 112.
295.
Supernatural, the, 142. 156, 158,
182, 234, 271, 280, 282, 297.
Surrey, Henry, Earl of. 34, 37, 39,
43,44, 58, 93, 293.
Swift, Jonathan, 128, 134.
Swinburne, .\lgernon Charles, 97,
166, 193, 229, 230, 239-248, 252,
255, 257, 262, 264. 289, 297, 298.
Sylvester, Joshua, 71.
Symon.s, Arthur, 137, 141, 166, 175.
204, 205. 289. 290.
Tabley. Lord de. 240.
Tannahill, Robert, 147, 185.
Taylor, .\nn, 168.
Taylor, Jane. 168.
Taylor, Sir Henry, 192, 193.
Tennyson, .\lfred. Lord, 193-202,
213, 214, 217. 220-222, 226, 227,
237, 238, 240, 245. 248, 250, 262,
265, 287, 297, 298.
Tenny.son, Frederick, 195.
Tertullian, 110.
Trrza-rima, 47.
ThiK-keray, William Make[)eacc.
215.
Th.MKritus. 108.
Thorn. William. 185.
Thompson, I-'ranci.s, 204. 205. 274-
277. 27!).
Thom.son. C. L., 2H.
Thoinson. Jainr-s. 131. 1.33, 134,
1H», 2H1.
Thomscm, James ("B. V."), 248,
249.
Thombury, W'alter, 210.
Tonson, Jacoi), 128.
Toticl's MisccUani/, 41, 42.
Toumeur. Cyril, 191.
Traherne, Thomas, 98, 99.
Transcendentalism, 284.
Trench, Herbert, 291.
Trench, Richard Chenevix, 210.
Triolet, 29, 257.
Trochaics, 50.
Troubadours, 12-14, 18, 37, 293.
Trouveres, 12, 18, 27, 293.
Tuppcr, Martin Farquhar, 262.
Turberville, George, 44.
Turner, Charles Tennyson, 195.
Tyndail, John, 221.
Tytler, Patrick Eraser, 144.
Unwin, Mary, 139.
Upham, A. H., 00.
Vaughan, Henry, 95, 97, 98,
295.
Vaughan, Thomas, 97, 105.
Vaux, Thomas, Lord, 40.
Vere, Edward de, see Oxford, Earl
of.
Vere, Sir Aubrey de, 168.
Vere, Aubrey dc (the younger),
211, 2H1.
Vergil, 108.
Verlaine. 290.
Verse, 2, 3; macaronic, 15; nmoe-
biean. 2(); forms of, in tlie Mid-
tile Ages. 22, 24, 25. 29. 30; early
Tudor, .30; l''li/.abel!i,'iii forms of,
37 .39; prevalence of iiimbie, 44;
theories and experiments in eliiss-
ical, 44, 45. 73; imifalion of
Italian. .37. 50 52. 54. 59, (iO. (iS.
69. 75; titles of Elizabethan lyri-
cal forms, 49, 50; octo.syllabic,
334
INDEX
50, IGl, 181; ingenuity in, of the
Caroline age, 96, 105; unortho-
dox, 101, lOi; irregular, in the
ode, 103, 104; of the Restoration,
114; trochaic substitution in iam-
bic, 130; Popean, 139; of Christa-
bel, 156; Lamb's use of irregular,
161, 162; octosyllabic, of Keats,
181 ; use of, in refrain, 190; theory
and practice of Patmore in, 213;
hexameter, of Clough, 224; of
Arnold, 221; technique of Swin-
burne's, 240, 244; revival of
French forms in, 257, 258;
Bridges' theory of, 268.
Vers de socieie, 7, 28, discussion of,
91. 92; 99, 100, 101, 114, 120,
124. 127, 163, 188, 215, 216. 256;
and Mr. Dobson, 258, 269.
Via media, the, 218; the poetical,
219.
Victoria, Queen, 187, 190, 192, 193,
221.
Villanelle, 257, 266.
Villon. Frangois, 15, 261.
VivianI, Emily, 175.
Wade, Thomas, 183, 190.
Waddington, Samuel, 132. 262.
Walker, H., 218.
Waller, Edmund, 83, 89, 101, 102,
104, 105, 112, 113, 114, 117, 120,
123, 295, 296.
Walpole, Horace, 120.
Walsh, Edward, 282.
Walsh, William, 131, 132.
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 59.
Walton, Isaak, 100.
Ward, T. H., 232.
Warren, John Byrne Leicester. See
Tablcy, Lord de.
Warton. Thomas. 131, 132, 13G.
Watson, James, 143.
Watson, Thomas, 43. 45, 50, 51. 52,
80.
Watson, William, 265. 266. 268,
269, 270, 279, 287.
Watts, Isaac, 136.
Watts-Dunton, T., 150, 233.
Webster, Augusta Davies. 210.
Webster. John, 83, 191.
Weekes, Charles. 285.
Weelkes, Thomas, 51, 74.
Wells, Charles Jeremiah, 183. 190.
191, 192, 193.
Wertherism, 227.
Wesley, Charles, 136,
Wesley, John, 136.
Westbrook, Harriet, 174.
Weygandt, C, 264, 265, 271,
284.
Whalley, Peter. 82.
White, Blanco, 168.
White, Henry Kirke, 168.
Whitehead. William, 136.
Whitman, Walt, 162.
Wilbye, John, 51.
Wilde, Oscar, 246. 247.
William IH, 120, 124.
Wilson, Alexander, 144.
Winchilsea, Anne Finch, Countess
of, 131.
Wither, George, 81, 93. 94. 119,
161, 214, 267.
Wolsey, Cardinal, 33.
Woodberry, G. E., 243.
Woolner, Thomas, 234.
Wordsworth, William, 3, 98, 108,
131, 139, 141, 148, 149, 151, 152-
155, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 169,
170, 179, 183, 185, 186, 193, 195,
196. 203, 224, 228, 2.32, 251,
262, 265, 267, 270, 271, 272,
297.
INDEX
335
Wordsworthians, the. 167, 168, 183,
185, 195, ilO,iii, HI; contem-
porary, 264, 265, 267, 269, 272.
Wyatt, Sir Thomas. 34, 37-39, 43,
58, 80, 293.
Yeats, William Butler, 166, 211,
212, 264, 265, 266, 281, 282, 283,
284, 285.
Yonge, Nicholas, 51.
Young, Edward, 130, 133.
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