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1608), and his Parliament of Bees, rather a masque than a play (earliest extant edition, 1641), represent the best of his work. The Parliament of Bees has chiefly inspired Mr. Swinburne's beautiful poem to Day in the Sonnets to the Elizabethan Dramatists.

cellaneous writer. Payne Collier was of opinion that he wrote for the stage before 1592-it was in 1592 that, as Greene's literary executor, he apologised to Shakespeare for the attack made on him in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (see above, Ch. VI.) Of his thirteen known plays only one, The Tragedy of Hoffman, was published (1631). He collaborated a great deal with Dekker, and, with him and Haughton, produced Patient Grissil in 1603.-notably Jonson's. His own original We read in Henslowe's Diary that the partners received, "in earnest of" this play, "the summe of 3li of good and lawfull money.'

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SIR ASTON COKAYNE (1608-1684), a Derbyshire knight, was merely a littérateur, who lived in the society of authors, and wrote comedies in distant imitation of Fletcher, the best of which was an adaptation from the Italian play called Trappolin Creduto Principe. It was afterwards known by the English name of A Duke and No Duke.

JOHN COOKE, an actor, produced a play called Greene's Tu Quoque, or the City Gallant, in 1614. He was also the author of fifty epigrams (1604).

NATHANIEL FIELD (1587-1633) was an actor-playwright, and took a leading part in the presentation of several of the best Elizabethan plays

work consists of two amusing comedies, A Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies, both acted before 1610. The second, as the titles show, is a recantation of the first. Field wrote part of Massinger's Fatal Dowry.

HENRY GLAPTHORNE wrote five extant plays, which are something a little less than mediocre. He belongs to the Massinger and Shirley period of the drama, and, in addition to some comedies which clearly show the prevailing influence of the age, published a tragedy dealing with contemporary history and called Albertus Wallenstein (1639).

SIR FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (1554-1628), was at ShrewsSIR WILLIAM D'AVENANT (1606-bury School with Sidney, and after1668) wrote a great number of plays, mostly in the tragic vein, of which Albovine (1629) and The Cruel Brother (1630) are the most famous. We shall speak of D'Avenant again further on; he is one of those dramatists who stand on the brink of the Restoration period; and no one so actively promoted the revival of the drama after Puritan days.

ROBERT DAVENPORT wrote among other works, a Fletcherian comedy of the usual type called The City Nightcap (1624); and, in King John and Matilda, combined history with

romance.

JOHN DAY, who appears to have been a member of Caius College, Cambridge, worked much on old plays and at the joint business of furnishing new ones with the indefatigable Dekker and Chettle. He wrote, however, some charming pieces of his own, showing a great deal of wit and light fancy. His Humour Out of Breath (licensed and published

wards at Jesus College, Cambridge. In discussing the sonneteers, we have already mentioned his Calica. He was also the author of the Life of Sidney (1652). His two Senecan dramas, Mustapha (1609) and Alaham (1633), from which Lamb selected in his Specimens, are obviously unfit for the stage, but stand well as examples of rhetorical tragedy. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1614, and was, in his old age, stabbed by a servant whom he had neglected in his will.

author

WILLIAM HAUGHTON, of A Woman will have her Will (1598), was a member of the DekkerChettle confederacy, which supplied Henslowe of the Rose and Fortune Theatres with plays (see ante).

SHACKERLEY MARMION (d. 1639) was of the Tribe of Ben and followed the comedy of intrigue. We have only three plays of his, and a short poem, called Cupid and Psyche (1637).

ANTHONY MUNDAY (1553-1633) | was said by Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598) to be the "best plotter" among the comic poets; which might easily have been true at that early date. Fourteen plays were written either partly or wholly by him. The first of importance was Valentine and Orson, published in 1598, but acted much earlier. He was assisted by Drayton, Hathway, and Robert Wilson, it is said, in Sir John Oldcastle, which was published in 1600, and ascribed by the printer to Shakespeare (see ante, Ch. VII. Note C). In 1601 Munday published Robert Earl of Huntingdon's Downfall, and, assisted by Chettle, Robert Earl of Huntingdon's Death. His writings extended over the period 1580-1621. Perhaps his chief claim to consideration rests on his painstaking translations of chivalrous romances, c.g. Palmerin d'Oliva (1588) and Amadis de Gaul (1595). He died August 10, 1633, and is styled on his monument in St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, "citizen and draper of London."

THOMAS NABBES was one of the members of the Tribe of Ben, and wrote a few fluent but insignificant masques and comedies - Covent Garden (1633), Tottenham Court (1633), Microcosmus (1637), and The Bride (1638). The first two names remind us of Shirley's Hyde Park, and give us the key to the spirit of the pieces. He wrote also a continuation (1638) of Knolles' History of the Turks. Little is known of him save that he was secretary to some nobleman near Worcester.

HENRY PORTER is known, from Henslowe's Diary, to have worked in partnership with Chettle and Jonson at a play called Hot Anger soon Cold (1598), and to have written the charming comedy of The Two Angry Women of Abington (1599).

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1638) and The Jealous Lovers (published 1632); and in all his work he drew freely from Plautus, Terence, and Aristophanes. He died of smallpox at the early age of twentynine.

SAMUEL ROWLEY, the probable author of The Noble Spanish Soldier (1631), deserves mention, but chiefly in order to distinguish him from WILLIAM ROWLEY (1585?-1642?), the very powerful and unequal dramatist whose hand is to be seen in Middleton's Changeling and A Fair Quarrel. Rowley's tragedy, All's Lost by Lust, points to a very distinct tragic power, and gives

considerable reason for the favourable attitude which recent criticism, in revising its opinion of Middleton, has taken towards him as well. However, he did much strong, coarse work in farcical comedy, and the very unhumorous comic scenes in Shakespeare's Pericles, that work of several authors, are supposed by some critics to be his. Samuel Rowley certainly wrote When you see me, you know me, or the History of Henry VIII (published 1605).

SIR JOHN SUCKLING (1609-1642), of whom more in the next chapter, wrote three rather dull tragedies called Aglaura, Brennoralt, and the unfinished Sad One, and a comedy called The Goblins (1638). Suckling's writing is frigid, and its tone is post-Restoration rather than Elizabethan. His plays form part of his posthumous Fragmenta Aurea (1646); but The Sad One did not appear in paint till 1658.

ROBERT TAYLOR, an early dramatist, wrote a play called The Hog hath lost his Peart, which is familiar to most readers from the admirable specimen cited by Charles Lamb.

JOHN WILSON (1627? - 1696) brought out, in post-Restoration times, two noteworthy comedies, The Cheats (1664) and The Projec tors (1665), and two other plays, in avowed imitation of Ben Jonson. His work, late as it is in date, is very excellent of its kind, and one is tempted to regret that the Elizabethan spirit-of which a gleam is seen in Nathanjel Lee-did not

revive more successfully, instead of succumbing to French dramatic

fashions.

In addition to these writers should be mentioned the anonymous author of Nero, published in 1624 and 1633, one of the best of the classical tragedies of the era, after Shakespeare's, and possessing more liveliness and

spirit than Ben Jonson's Roman plays, with a certain degree, at the same time, of rhetorical stateliness. Nero has been edited once or twice of recent years (by Mr. A. H. Bullen, and in the " Mermaid" series by Mr. H. P. Horne), but the author's name has never been satisfactorily conjectured.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CAROLINE POETS.

§ 1. The so-called metaphysical poetry; its characteristics. § 2. GEORGE WITHER and FRANCIS QUARLES. § 3. GEORGE HERBERT and RICHARD CRASHAW. § 4. THOMAS CAREW, ROBERT HERRICK, SIR JOHN SUCKLING and RICHARD LOVELACE. § 5. WILLIAM BROWNE and WILLIAM HABINGTON. § 6. EDMUND WALLER. § 7. SIR WILLIAM D'AVENANT and SIR JOHN DENHAM. § 8. ABRAHAM COWLEY.

seventeenth

§ 1. THE seventeenth century is one of the most momentous epochs in English history. A large portion of it is occupied by an immense political and religious fermentation, out of which came many of those institutions to which Poetry of the the country owes its present grandeur and happiness. century. In its literary aspect this agitated epoch, although not marked by that marvellous outburst of creative power which dazzled us in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, has nevertheless left obvious traces on the turn of thought and expression of the English people; and in poetry alone, excluding the solitary example of Milton as a poet of the first order, we may say that this period produced a class of admirable writers in whom intellect and fancy were more powerful than sentiment or passion. In these poets, whom Johnson called the metaphysical class, ingenuity predominates over feeling, and, while Milton owed much to many of them, they had nevertheless far more to do in generating the so-called correct and artificial manner of the age of William III, Anne, and George I. We propose to pass in rapid review, and generally according to chronological order, the most distinguished names among these poets from 1640 to 1700.

era.

§ 2. GEORGE WITHER and FRANCIS QUARLES are a pair of poets, typical, in some ways, of the best and worst work of this Wither was born at Bentworth, near Alresford, and was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. GEORGE His family were not very well off, and, after leaving (1588-1667). college, he had to take up farming. Subsequently,

WITHER

he entered at Lincoln's Inn; and, during the Civil War, changed sides from Royalist to Roundhead. At the Restora

tion, he had to undergo severe persecution and a long imprisonment, which seem to have been no more than he deserved. His most important works are the collection of semi-pastoral poems called The Shepherd's Hunting (1615), and the fanciful narrative of The Mistress of Philarete (1622); but, in addition to these, he wrote a great deal of religious poetry-in 1623, the fine Hymns and Songs of the Church, and, in 1641, a collection called Hallelujah-while almost his earliest work was a satire, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613). His rural descriptions show an exquisite sense of beauty, and his moral tone is sweet and pure without being brought obtrusively into notice. His vice, in common with most of his contemporaries, was a Defects of passion for ingenious turns of phrase and unexpected conceits, which bear the same relation to really

Wither's

poetry. beautiful thoughts that plays upon words bear to wit.

He was also often singularly deficient in taste: his lyric utterance fails, and he deforms graceful images by placing them side by side with what is merely quaint and sometimes even ignoble. Many of his detached lyrics are extremely beautiful, and his verse is generally flowing and melodious; but, in reading his best passages, we always feel a nervous apprehension that we shall come, at any moment, upon something that will jar upon our sympathy. Among other works, he wrote a series of Emblems, in which his puritanical enthusiasm revels in a system of moral and theological analogies as far-fetched as poetical.

FRANCIS
QUARLES
(1592-1644).

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Quarles, a Royalist as ardent as Wither was a devoted Republican, exhibits many points of intellectual resemblance to Wither, but was far his inferior in poetical sentiment. He was born at Romford and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and, having filled the offices of cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Queen of Hearts," of secretary to Archbishop Ussher, and of Chronologer to the City of London, died in 1644, leaving his fortune much impaired by his fidelity to the King's cause. He wrote an immense amount; but his best-known work, which has enjoyed a considerable degree of popularity, is the collection of Divine Emblems (1635). In these verses he inculcated moral and religious principles in a style quaint and conceited beyond endurance. He illustrated them also with engravings which show the tendency to pictorial allegory run mad. For example, the text, "Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" is accompanied by a Superfluous cut representing a diminutive human figure, typical quaintness of his verse. of the human soul, peeping through the ribs of a skeleton as from behind the bars of a dungeon. This taste for extravagant, yet prosaic, allegory, was borrowed from the laborious ingenuity of the Dutch and Flemish moralists and divines. Quarles, indeed, borrowed the last three books of the Emblems, with their illustrations, from the Pia

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