Among the poets, EDMUND WALLER (1605-1687) ranks first in point of time. He was by birth a gentleman, and figured on the popular side in the Long Parliament, though he afterwards became a royalist. His poetry partakes of the gay and conceited manner of the reign of Charles 1., and chiefly consists in complimentary verses, of an amatory character, many of which are addressed to a lady whom he calls Sacharissa, and whose proper name was Lady Dorothy Sydney, afterwards Countess of Sunderland. In his latter years, he wrote in the new and more formal manner which had by that time been introduced. ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-1667) retains a higher reputation than Waller. He wrote poetry of considerable merit at ten years old, and had greatly improved in the art at twelve. His works consist of Anacreontics, (light gay trifles in the manner of the Greek poet Anacreon ;) elegiac poems; an epic named The Davideis; a long poem descriptive of plants; and a few epistles and miscellanies. These compositions possess great shrewdness, ingenuity, and learning; yet, though they frequently excite admiration, they seldom convey pleasure. The false taste of the age, and a fatal propensity to treat every thing abstractly or metaphysically, deform in his case the productions of a very able intellect. His Anacreontics alone are now relished; and of these one of the best is the ODE TO THE GRASSHOPPER. Happy insect! what can be Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Thee country hinds with gladness hear, Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire; Phoebus is himself thy sire. To thee, of all things on the earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect! happy thou Dost neither age nor winter know: But when thou'st drunk, and danc'd, and sung, Thy fill, the flow'ry leaves among, (Voluptuous and wise withal, Epicurean animal!) Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to endless rest. The greatest poet of this age, if not in the whole range of the English poets, was JOHN MILTON (1608-1674), the son of a London scrivener, and born in that city. This illustrious person, who had the rare fortune to be educated as a man of letters, wrote, in his early years, some short poems, in the manner of the reign of Charles I., already described, but with more taste. Of these, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso continue in the highest degree popular, and will probably ever be so. In middle life, being of republican principles, he employed himself in writing pamphlets in favour of the Commonwealth, and afterwards acted as Latin secretary to Cromwell. At the Restoration he went into retirement, and, though struck with blindness, devoted himself to the composition of an epic poem, which he had long contemplated, upon the subject of the Fall of Man. This memorable work was publish ed in 1667, under the title of Paradise Lost, but did not for several years attract much attention, being in a style too elevated and pious for the taste of the age. The bargain which the bookseller made with the author on this occasion, has excited the surprise of posterity. The publisher allowed only five pounds at first, a similar sum when thirteen hundred copies had been sold, and as much for every subsequent edition which should be published. Milton received only ten pounds in all, and his widow sold the remainder of the copyright for eight. Yet it must not be inferred from this that the poet was poor, for at his death he left fifteen hundred pounds to his family. The Paradise Lost is in blank verse, and the first considerable specimen of that kind of poetry, apart from the drama. It is divided into twelve books, and relates, with the greatest dignity of thought and language, the circumstances of the fall of man, not only as far as these can be gathered from the Scriptures, but with the advantage of many fictitious incidents, which in the course of time had sprung up, or which the imagination of the poet supplied. Elevated partly by the nature of his subject, and partly by the piety of his own mind, Milton has in this work reached a degree of poetical excellence which seems to throw all preceding and subsequent writers into the shade. The Paradise Lost resembles nothing else in literature; it stands on a height by itself, and, as there are no other themes of equal sublimity, it will never probably be matched. A critic, analysing the poetical character of Milton, says, he has sublimity in the highest degree; beauty in an equal degree; pathos next to the highest; perfect character in the conception of Satan, of Adam, and Eve; fancy, learning, vividness of description, stateliness, decorum. His style is elaborate and powerful, and his versification, with occasional harshness and affectation, superior in variety and harmony to all other blank verse: it has the effect of a piece of fine music.' 6 Considerable portions of the Paradise Lost are descriptive of scenes and events above this world; and, as man F can form no ideas of which the objects around him have not supplied at least the elements, the poet may be said to have there fallen short of his design. Sublime as his images are, and lofty the strain of his sentiments, still his heaven is only a more magnificent kind of earth, and his most exalted supernatural beings only a nobler order of men. This is, however, what was to have been expected; and when we judge the poet by the ordinary reach of the human faculties, we shall perhaps find these passages the finest in the book. The description of the battle, for instance, between the angelic host of God and the followers of the rebel Satan, though only a grander sort of earthly fight, and even affected by the military costume of the seventeenth century, can never fail to be admired as something above the powers of ordinary poets. As a specimen of the milder and more familiar descriptions in the Paradise Lost, we present ADAM'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. -As new wak'd from soundest sleep Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid Survey'd, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran MILTON. Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains, While thus I call'd, and stray'd, I knew not whither, My fancy to believe I yet had being, And liv'd: One came, methought of shape divine, Submiss he rear'd me, and whom thou sought'st I am, Above, or round about thee, or beneath. 77 |