best are his Shepherd's Hunting, Wither's Motto (Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo), Faire-Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, The Hymns and Songs of the Church, Collection of Emblems, Hallelujah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer, etc. "Dismissing with contempt the puerilities and conceits which deformed the pages of so many of his contemporaries, he cultivated, with almost uniform assiduity, a simplicity of style and an expression of natural sentiment and feeling which have occasioned the revival of his choicest compositions in the nineteenth century, and will forever stamp them with a permanent value." - Drake. Herrick. Robert Herrick, 1591-1662, was a lyric poet of considerable note, in the times of the Commonwealth and the Restoration. His Career. Herrick was born in London and educated at Cambridge. He took holy orders and was presented by Charles I. with a vicarage, but was ejected during the civil war. At the Restoration, he was reinstated in his living. He was equally unclerical in his manner of life and in his writings. He was a frequenter of taverns, where he "quaffed his mighty bowl" with Ben Jonson and other boon companions. His verse is mostly of the light, anacreontic kind, and some of it is loose and licentious. Works. Herrick published Noble Numbers, or Pious Pieces, containing only hymns and other religious lyrics; also, Hesperides, containing both devotional pieces and anacreontics, or "works human and divine," as he himself styled them, and the two kinds are sadly mixed up. With all his irregularities, however, he was a genuine poet, and often wrote with singular sweetness and beauty. Some of his short lyrics, Cherry Ripe, Gather the Rose Buds while ye may, To Blossoms, To Daffodils, To Primroses, &c., are often quoted. The following lines seem to show that towards the close of his life he repented of his errors: "For these my unbaptized rhymes, Writ in my wild unhallowed times, That one of all the rest shall be The glory of my work and me." "The poet might better have evinced the sincerity and depth of his contrition by blotting out the unbaptized rhymes himself, or not reprinting them; but the vanity of the author probably triumphed over the penitence of the Christian. Gayety was the natural element of Herrick. His muse was a goddess fair and free, that did not move happily in serious numbers. There is, in his songs and anacreontics, an unforced gayety and natural tenderness, that show he wrote chiefly from the impulses of his own cheerful and happy nature. The select beauty and picturesqueness of Herrick's language, when he is in his happiest vein, is worthy of his fine conceptions; and his versification is harmony itself. His verses bound and flow like some exquisite lively melody, that echoes nature, by wood and dell, and presents new beauties at every turn and winding. The strain is short, and sometimes fantastic; but the notes long linger in the mind, and take their place forever in the memory. One or two words, such as gather the rose-buds,' call up a summer landscape, with youth, beauty, flowers, and music. This is, and ever must be, true poetry."--Chambers. Suckling. Sir John Suckling, 1608-1642, was pre-eminently the cavalier-poet of the times of Charles I. Career.Suckling studied at Cambridge. On the death of his father, in 1627, he came into the possession of large estates, went abroad, and in 1631 enlisted in the army of Gustavus Adolphus. In 1632 he returned to England, and made himself conspicuous as a gay cavalier. When the King undertook his expedition against the Scotch, Suckling raised a troop of one hundred horsemen, brilliantly caparisoned, at his own expense. At the sight of the enemy, however, they broke and fled without striking a blow. This furnished the occasion for innumerable satires and lampoons. Suckling's next exploit was an unsuccessful attempt to rescue Strafford from the Tower, which obliged him to flee to the continent. He died soon afterwards at the early age of thirty-four. His Works. Suckling's poetical works are of three kinds,- his dramas, which are of little value, his longer pieces, which are not much read, and his ballads and songs. These last have placed Suckling at the very head of English writers of song. They are not characterized by any very profound emotion, but are unsurpassed for sprightliness and ease. His Ballad on a Wedding, Tell me ye Juster Deities, When, Dearest, I but think of Thee, and others, are among the gems of song. In the Ballad on the Wedding occur the oft-quoted lines "Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out, A Selection from his Works, with a Sketch of his Life and Remarks on his Writings and Genius, was published in 1836 by the Rev. Alfred Suckling. Samuel Butler, 1612-1680, was a humorous writer of great celebrity. Butler's chief work, Hudibras, is a sort of English Don Quixote. Hudibras is universally received as one of the best works of wit and humor to be found in the language. The wit indeed often depends upon circumstances and allusions with which the public are no longer familiar, and therefore the work is not so generally read as it once was. Still it is, and it will ever be, a great favorite. The object of the poem was to ridicule the Puritans. "It is not only the best burlesque poem written against the Puritans of that age, so fertile în satire, but it is the best burlesque in the English language. The same amount of learning, wit, shrewdness, ingenious and deep thought, felicitous illustration, and irresistible drollery, has never been comprised in the same limits."- Chambers. Another poem of Butler's, The Elephant in the Moon, designed as a satire upon the Royal Society, was also an admirable production. Thomas Carew, 1589-1639, was a poet and a gay courtier of the time of Charles I. Carew's poetry, chiefly short amatory pieces and songs, was of the conventional kind then in fashion. It aimed at graceful compliment and gallantry rather than at truth. All his pieces are short and occasional, except one, a Masque, Coelum Britannicum, written by command of the King. His songs were exceedingly popular at the time. Among the poets who have walked in the same limited path, he is pre-eminently beautiful, and deservedly ranks among the earliest of those who gave a cultivated grace to our lyrical strains."- Campbell. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT, 1605-1668, had a high reputation in his day as a dramatist. He succeeded Ben Jonson as Poet Laureate, and at his death was buried in Westminster Abbey, with the inscription, "O Rare Sir William Davenant!" Anthony Wood's Account.-A part of Anthony Wood's account of him is worthy of note for the reference which it contains to another and much greater poet: "His mother was a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and conversation, in which she was imitated by none of her children but by this William. The father was a very good and discreet citizen, yet an admirer and lover of plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare, who frequented his house in his journeys between Warwickshire and London." Political Troubles. — In the political commotions resulting in the expulsion of the Stuarts, Sir William became involved, being a royalist. He was imprisoned at different times, lived abroad a while, was released from the Tower by the interposition of Milton, a brother poet, and on the Restoration, himself interposed for the protection of Milton from the fury of the monarchists. Works. His works are: Albovine, King of the Lombards, a Tragedy; Cruel Brother, a Tragedy; The Unfortunate Lover, a Tragedy; Love and Honor, a Play; The Man's the Master, a Comedy; Madagascar and Other Poems; Gondibert, an Heroic Poem, &c. Gondibert.—Gondibert is the work most frequently quoted, because of the controversy to which it led. By Waller, Cowley, and others, it was applauded in the highest terms. By other critics, it was so violently assailed that the author felt obliged to reply to their censures. The work was left unfinished. The part written contains more than 6,000 lines. JOHN TAYLOR, 1580-1654, self-styled "The Water-Poet," was collector of the wine fees for the Lieutenant of the Tower, and keeper of a public house at Oxford and of another at Westminster. Works. Taylor is the author of over one hundred and thirty poems and pieces, descriptive, satirical, and humorous. They have little merit in themselves, but are valuable as illustrative of the manners of the age. His chief occupation seems to have been the composition of satires against the Roundheads. FRANCIS ROUSE, 1579-1658, is celebrated for his metrical version of the Psalms. Career. Rouse was educated at Oxford. He was a member of successive Parliaments in the time of Charles I.; was a member of Cromwell's Privy Council, and one' of the few laymen appointed by the House of Commons to sit in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. He published a number of works, but is now known only by one, The Psalms Translated into English Metre, 1646. Rouse's version was recommended to the attention of the Westminster Assembly by the House of Commons, and was intended to supersede the version by Sternhold and Hopkins. Rouse's version is still used with loving reverence by a large and respectable body of Presbyterians, both in Great Britain and America. ALEXANDER Ross, 1590-1654, was a poet of some note in his day, and was chaplain to Charles I. Ross was a native of Aberdeen, Scotland. He was a man of learning and piety, but infected with the quaint conceits of the age. One of his works was entitled Mel Heliconium, or Poetical Honey gathered out of the Woods of Parnassus. He wrote A View of All the Religions of the World. It is to this learned work that reference is made in Hudibras: "There was an ancient sage philosopher, Who had read Alexander Ross over." One of his most noted works was a Latin poem on the life of Christ, called Virgilius "Acta Deumque cano, cœli qui primus ab oris He won great applause by this ingenious absurdity. FRANCIS QUARLES, 1592-1644, was a quaint writer of some note in the times of Charles I. Quarles was a graduate of Cambridge, and a man of learning and ability, but of such wretched taste that his works, though admirable for their moral and religious character, have fallen into general neglect. He was a partisan of the Royalists, and as such fell under the displeasure of the Parliamentary party, who sequestered his estates, and plundered him of his books and even of his manuscripts. Quarles's works, mostly poetical, are numerous. The following are the titles of a few: A Feast for Worms, in a Poem on the History of Jonah; Hadassah, or his History of Queen Esther; The History of Sampson; Job Militant, with Meditations Divine and Moral; Sion's Sonnets Sung by Solomon the King; Sion's Elegies Sung by Jeremy the Prophet; Pantæologia, or the Quintessence of Meditation; Divine Fancies, digested into Epigrams, Meditations, and Observations; Midnight Meditations of Death; Manual of Devotion; Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man; The Virgin Widow, a Comedy; Argalus and Parthenia, a Poem; The Enchiridion, containing Institutions Divine and Moral; Emblems, in five Books, etc. Quarles's Emblems, somewhat modernized, is still occasionally read. JOHN QUARLES, 1624-1665, son of the preceding, and a chaplain in the royal army, shared in the fortunes of his party. After the downfall of the Royalists, he lived in London and devoted himself to literature. He died of the Plague. The following are some of his works: Poems; A Kingly Bed of Misery; God's Love and Man's Unworthiness; The Banishment of Tarquin; Triumphant Chastity, or Joseph's Self-Conflict; Divine Meditations; The Tyranny of the Dutch against the English, a prose narration, etc. THOMAS MAY, 1594-1650, was a poet of note in the time of the civil wars in England between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. May had been a favorite with Charles I., but, on the breaking out of the war, he sided with the Parliament, and was appointed its Historiographer or Secretary. He wrote a History of the Long Parliament, which was published "by authority." It has been highly lauded or severely criticized, according to the political bias of his judges, but, on the whole, is not so thoroughly partisan as might be expected under the circumstances. It is, in fact, a temperate history of the civil war as seen through the eyes of the Parliamentarians. May was a very accomplished scholar. Among other literary achievements, he wrote a translation of Lucan's Pharsalia into English verse, and a continuation of it in Latin verse. He also translated the Georgics of Virgil into English verse, with annotations. He wrote also four Tragedies, Antigone, Cleopatra, Agrippina, and Julius Cæsar; two Comedies, The Heir, and The Old Couple; two historical Poems, The Reign of Henry II., and The Victorious Reign of Edward III. "The latter [Parliament] had, however, a writer who did them honor: May's His tory of the Parliament is a good model of genuine English; he is plain, terse and vigorous, never slovenly, though with few remarkable passages, and is, in style as well as substance, a kind of contrast to Clarendon."- Hallam. WILLIAM HABINGTON, 1605-1645, was educated at the College of St. Omer, and was intended originally for the Catholic priesthood, but |