Well tried through many a varying year, Of every friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills Affection's eye Thy praise to merit undefined. When fainting Nature called for aid, His vigorous remedy displayed The power of Art without the show. In misery's darkest caverns known, No summons mocked by chill delay, His virtues walked their narrow round, The busy day, the peaceful night, His frame was firm, his powers were bright, Then with no throbs of fiery pain, XII. OLD POETS. ROBERT HERRICK-GEORGE WITHER. NOTHING Seems stranger in the critics of the last century than their ignorance of the charming lyrical poetry of the times of the early Stuarts and the Commonwealth. One should think that the songs of the great dramatists, whose genius they did acknowledge-Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonsonmight have prepared them to recognize the kindred melodies of such versifiers as Marlowe, and Raleigh, and Withers, and Marvell. His Jacobite prejudices might have predisposed Dr. Johnson, in particular, to find some harmonious stanzas in the minstrels of the cavaliers, Lovelace and the Marquis of Montrose. But so complete is the silence in which the writers of that day pass over these glorious songsters, that it seems only charitable to suppose that these arbiters of taste had never met with their works. With the honorable exceptions of Thomas Wharton and Bishop Percy, there is not a critic from Johnson downward who does not cite Waller as the first poet who smoothed our rugged tongue into harmonious verse. And the prejudice lingers still in places where one does not expect to find it. The parish clerk of Beaconsfield is by no means the only, although by far the most excusable authority who, standing bare-headed before his pyramidal tomb in the church-yard, assured me with the most honest conviction, that Waller was the earliest and finest versifier in the language. Herrick is one of the many whose lyrics might be called into court to overturn this verdict. Originally bred to the bar, he took orders at a comparatively late period, and obtained a living in Devonshire, from which he fled during the strict rule of the Lord Protector, concealing himself under a lay habit in London, and returning to his parsonage with the return of the monarch, whose birth had formed the subject of one of his earliest pastorals. More than any eminent writer of that day, Herrick's collection requires careful sifting; but there is so much fancy, so much delicacy, so much grace, that a good selection would well repay the publisher. Bits there are that are exquisite: as when in enumerating the cates composing "Oberon's Feast," in his "Fairyland," he includes, among a strange farrago of unimaginable dishes, "The broke heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music." Some of his pieces, too, contain curious illustrations of the customs, manners, and prejudices of our ancestors. I shall quote one or two from the division of the Hesperides, that he calls "charms and ceremonies," beginning with the motto: DIVINATION BY A DAFFODIL. When a daffodil I see, Hanging down his head toward me, The adorning the houses with evergreens seems then to have been as common as our own habit of decking them with flowers. CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE. Down with rosemary and bays, The holly hitherto did sway; Or Easter's Eve appear. Then youthful box, which now has grace Your houses to renew, Grown old, surrender must his place Unto the crisped yew. When yew is out, then birch comes in Both of a fresh and fragrant kin Green rushes then and sweetest bents, Come in for comely ornaments To re-adorn the house. Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold, THE BELLMAN. From noise of scare-fires rest ye free, From all mischances that may fright My masters all, good day to you! The description of a steer in one of his "Bucolics" is graphic and life-like. The herdswoman is lamenting the loss of her favorite I have lost my lovely steer, That to me was far more dear Than these kine that I milk here; Party-colored like a pie, Smooth in each limb as a die; Clear of hoof, and clear of horn, Sharply pointed as a thorn; With a neck by yoke unworn, From the which hung down by strings, Interlaced by ribbonings. Taultless every way for shape, Ever gamesome as an ape, But his real delight was among flowers and bees, and nymphs and cupids; and certainly these graceful subjects were never handled more gracefully. THE CAPTIVE BEE. As Julia once a slumbering lay, For some rich flower he took the lip But when he felt he sucked from thence Honey, and in the quintessence, He drank so much he scarce could stir, And thus surprised, as filchers use, And told her, as some tears did fall, He should from her full lips derive THE BAG OF THE BEE. About the sweet bag of a bee Which, Venus hearing, thither came, Which done, to still their wanton cries G |