the Restoration, and appears, from verses prefixed to his Poems, to have been more or less intimate with Charles Cotton and Izaak Walton. He begins a witty preface To the Reader by attributing his collection of his poems to laziness and a long vacation, "the one inclining me to do nothing else, and the other affording me nothing else to do." I take my text from the third edition, 1668. Brome's erotic verse is neither musical nor very original. His most characteristic productions are his Cavalier Songs, which have abundance of rough vigor, if little poetry, in them. 182 10. 182 11. A she. Cf. 99 2. The only argument. Cf. Wither's immortal "Shall I, wasting in despair" (Elizabethan Lyrics, p. 168). 182 18. Stain, i.e., by comparison. Cf. Lyly's Song of Daphne in Midas: "My Daphne's beauty stains all faces." 182 19. Shadows. This is the reading of the ed. of 1668 and of Chalmers. Mr. Saintsbury, Seventeenth Century Lyrics, reads shadow. 183. Sir William Davenant was godson of Shakespeare, poet laureate preceding Dryden, dramatist, and author of the epic Gondibert. His work is not without merit, but rarely rises above mediocrity. I cannot find anything beyond these two little poems in Davenant's bulky folio to serve my purpose. 184 1. The lark now leaves his wat'ry nest. Cf. Venus and Adonis, 853: 184 12. Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high. Draw your curtains, and begin the dawn. A common sentiment of the poets. Cf. Crashaw, 114 21, Carew, 70 16, and Herrick, Upon Electra: When out of bed my love doth spring 'Tis but as day a-kindling; But when she's up and fully drest 'Tis then broad day throughout the east. 184. Katherine Philips, whose maiden name was Fowler, gathered about her at her home in Cardigan, and on her visits to London, “a society of friendship, the members of which were distinguished [after the manner of the romances of the day] by various fanciful names." Thus her husband was known as Antenor, she herself as Orinda, to which her admirers affixed the adjective "matchless." Her earliest work appeared in 1651, prefixed to the volumes of poems of Henry Vaughan and William Cartwright. Most of her verses were published after her death; they are largely devoted to friendship. We may agree with Mr. G. Thorn Drury, the writer of the article on this excellent lady in the Dictionary of National Biography, that "Orinda's fame as a poet [was] always considerably in excess of her merits." 185. Sir William Killegrew was elder brother of the dramatists Henry and Thomas. He wrote several plays, all of them acted after the Restoration. His later work was chiefly devotional. 186. Sir George Etheridge was the author of three comedies and much reputed for his wit. He was employed abroad as envoy to Hamburg and minister to Ratisbon, in which latter place he died. 186. Song. This song was lengthened into a broadside ballad. Cf. Roxburghe Ballads, XVI, 133–135 (Bullen). 186 10. His is Mr. Bullen's reading for this of the original. 187. The Indian Queen was published as "written by the Honorable Sir Robert Howard," the brother-in-law of Dryden. Dryden not only touched up the whole play, but wrote large portions of it. The songs are in his manner. 187 7. Zempoalla is the usurping Indian queen. 187 8. On her dismal vision wait. After these words the queen impatiently interrupts the incantation, which then continues. 187 9. Toad . . . adders'. Cf. Middleton's The Witch, v. 2: 187 14. Clifts. The juice of toad, the oil of adder, Those will make the younker madder. Dryden uses this form of the word "cliff" elsewhere, Translation of Persius, vi. 17. 187 24. Use. Are accustomed to. 188. "The Indian Emperor," says Scott, "is the first of Dryden's plays which exhibited, in a marked degree, the peculiarity of his style, and drew upon him the attention of the world.” 188 5. Does. Later ed. reads would. 188 13. Fall, fall, fall. Cf. Jonson's lyric in Cynthia's Revels, i. 2 : Like melting snow upon some craggy hill, Drop, drop, drop, drop. 188. Sir Charles Sedley led the usual dissipated life of his age. He is thus distinguished as a wit from his two great rivals by Bishop Burnet : 66 Sedley had a more sudden and copious wit, which furnished a perpetual run of discourse; but he was not so correct as Lord Dorset, nor so sparkling as Lord Rochester" (History of His Own Time, I, 372). Sedley appears to have become somewhat less frivolous in later life, and took sides against the Stuarts at the Revolution. I read from the collected ed. of Sedley's Works, 1778. Cf. a very different treatment of a 188. The Mulberry Garden is described by Ward as "partly founded on Molière's L'École des Maris." The title of this lyric is given in the play a few lines above the poem. similar theme by Marvell, The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers, p. 159, above. 190 7. I only care. I care alone. Cf. 199 6. 191 22. Joy. Bliss in some editions, with a change of the fourth line of the stanza to "No less inhuman is." This version concludes with an additional stanza, which is no gain to the poem. 191 6. Knotted. Knotting was a kind of fancywork similar to lace making. See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, I, 17. 192 1. Phyllis, men say. There is an amplification of the last stanza of this song in most editions of Sedley. This destroys the unity of the poem, as the addition is distinctly inferior. 193. Tyrannic Love is one of the most characteristic of the heroic plays of Dryden; An Evening's Love, largely a translation from various sources, is a very vivacious comedy. 194. You Charmed Me. The simplicity, directness, and choice diction of this little song show the master hand of a strong poet. 194. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is thus tersely described by Walpole: "A man whom the Muses were fond to inspire and ashamed to avow; and [who] practised, without the least reserve, that secret which can make verses more read for their defects than their merits" (Noble Authors, II, 43). Rochester died at thirty-two a ruined debauchee. The text is from the ed. of 1680. 195 8. That tears, etc. In later editions: "That tears my fixèd heart from love." 195 11. Where love, etc. A later reading is: "Where love, and peace, and honor flow." 196. Upon Drinking in a Bowl. A spirited paraphrase of the song ascribed to Anacreon, Eis Toтýριov ȧpyvρoûv. Rochester has delightfully enlarged upon the Greek: "Deepen the cup as much as you can (öσov dúvŋ ßálvvov)," to suggest "vast toasts on the delicious lake, like ships." 196 11. Maestrick was captured by the French under Louis XIV and Vauban in July, 1673. The English were his allies in this war. Evelyn, in his Diary under date of August 21, 1674, describes an out-of-door tableau at Winsor, in the meadow, showing the Siege of Maestricht. I do not identify the allusion to Yarmouth leaguer. 196 15. Sir Sidrophel is the name of the astrologer in the Second Part of Hudibras, Canto iii, the argument to which begins thus: The Knight, with various doubts possest, To win the Lady goes in quest Of Sidrophel the Rosycrucian, To know the Dest'nies' resolution. William Lilly, a famous almanac maker of the day, was Butler's original. Ten years later the satirist applied the name to a member of the Royal Society who was pleased to doubt Butler's authorship of Hudibras. 197 8. Will still love on. This phrase and the corresponding phrase of the next stanza is repeated in the original, probably owing to the demands of some popular melody to which it was set. 197 13. His smart. His is a later reading; the ed. of 1680 reads this. 198 2. Things, may melt. Things that may melt. Cf. 1 2. 199 6. 200. Aphara, Aphra or Afra Behn, whose maiden name was Johnson, was the first woman in England to make authorship a profession. She wrote a great deal and succeeded as a dramatist, a writer of stories and other prose. Despite the fact that she "trod the boards loosely," in the manner of her age, some of the works of Mrs. Behn are not without merit. This is especially true of her story Oroonoko, a book which exhibits many sentiments which forebode Rousseau, and courts, from its subject, a comparison with Uncle Tom's Cabin. 200. Abdelazer, a tragedy, is a rifacimento of Marlowe's Lust's Dominion. The text is from Plays Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, 1724. This poem appears also in The Loyal Garland, ed. 1686, and elsewhere. 201. Troilus and Cressida is one of Dryden's several quarryings in the works of Shakespeare and Milton. The anapastic movement of this little lyric is worthy of note. Cf. Rochester's Song (Poems, ed. 1680, p. 43): To this moment a rebel, I throw down my arms; and, far earlier, Davenant's irregular Wake all the dead, Saintsbury's Seventeenth Century Lyrics, p. 113. 201. Horace Walpole says of Dorset: "He was the finest gentle man of the voluptuous court of Charles II, and in the gloomy one of King William. He had as much wit as his first master, or his contemporaries, Buckingham and Rochester, without the royal want of feeling, the duke's want of principles, or the earl's want of thought" (Noble Authors, II, 96). The lyrics of Dorset are found only in collections and miscellanies. While it is impossible accurately to determine the time of the writing of his poems, the range of his activity as an author certainly extends from soon after the Restoration to the death of Charles. There is a piece addressed to Dorinda, who has been identified with Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, bearing date 1680. His most famous poem, the Song, Written at Sea, bears date 1665. 202 1. Phyllis, for shame. This song, so far as I can ascertain, did not appear in print until 1700, in the collection Works of Celebrated Authors of whose Writings there are but Small Remains. 203. The Spanish Friar was what was known as a Protestant play. This was not the only instance in which Dryden diverted his genius into the paths of applied drama. 204. The Duke of Guise, a play of palpable political import, was the joint work of Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. This song is certainly Dryden's. In Scott's edition, as revised by Saintsbury, the original music is given. 204 9. Cordial. Anything which invigorates; used elsewhere by Dryden in this general sense. Cf. "Charms to my sight and cordials to my mind." 205. John Norris, rector of Bemerton, was a student of Platonism, a disciple of Malebranche, and a voluminous author. His poems have been collected and published by Dr. Grosart in his Fuller Worthies' Miscellanies. The Hymn to Darkness is Norris' best poem, and that is improved by Mr. Palgrave's judicious curtailing, a process which the plan of this book will not permit. See the Golden Treasury of English Lyrics, p. 128, where the poem is described as "a lyric of a strange, fanciful, yet solemn beauty; Cowley's style intensified by the mysticism of Henry More." 205 9. This monument. The world, explains Mr. Palgrave. 207. The Morning Quatrains. This poem, with its companions, Noon Quatrains, Evening, and Night, has a charming naturalness in description not common in the poetry of Cotton's contemporaries. 208 21. Xanthus and Æthon, the horses of the sun. 208 36. Humanity in the Latin sense of kindliness towards others, civility. |