the same with Carew's "He that loves a rosy cheek," or with "Roses,
their sharp spines being gone." The lighter poetry of Carew's day

is all powdered with gold dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is
crowned and diapered with roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from

the Arabian phoenix's nest. Little Cupids flutter and twitter here
and there among the boughs, as in that feast of Adonis which

Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in Eisen's vignettes for
Dorat's Baisers:

"Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;

For in pure love did Heaven prepare
These powders to enrich your hair."

It would be affectation, Gifted, if you rhymed in that fashion for
the lady of your love, and presented her, as it were, with cosmical

cosmetics, and compliments drawn from the starry spaces and deserts,
from skies, phoenixes, and angels. But it was a natural and pretty

way of writing when Thomas Carew was young. I prefer Herrick the
inexhaustible in dainties; Herrick, that parson-pagan, with the soul

of a Greek of the Anthology, and a cure of souls (Heaven help them!)
in Devonshire. His Julia is the least mortal of these "daughters of

dreams and of stories," whom poets celebrate; she has a certain
opulence of flesh and blood, a cheek like a damask rose, and "rich

eyes," like Keats's lady; no vaporous Beatrice, she; but a handsome
English wench, with

"A cuff neglectful and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly;

A winning wave, deserving note
In the tempestuous petticoat."

Then Suckling strikes up a reckless military air; a warrior he is
who has seen many a siege of hearts--hearts that capitulated, or

held out like Troy-town, and the impatientassailant whistles:
"Quit, quit, for shame: this will not move,

This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her -
The devil take her."

So he rides away, curling his moustache, hiding his defeat in a big
inimitable swagger. It is a pleasanter piece in which Suckling,

after a long leaguer of a lady's heart, finds that Captain honour is
governor of the place, and surrenderhopeless. So he departs with a

salute:
"March, march (quoth I), the word straight give,

Let's lose no time but leave her:
That giant upon air will live,

And hold it out for ever."
Lovelace is even a better type in his rare good things of the

military amorist and poet. What apology of Lauzun's, or Bussy
Rabutin's for faithlessness could equal this? -

"Why dost thou say I am forsworn,
Since thine I vowed to be?

Lady, it is already morn;
It was last night I swore to thee

That fond impossibility."
Has "In Memoriam" nobler numbers than the poem, from exile, to

Lucasta? -
"Our Faith and troth

All time and space controls,
Above the highest sphere we meet,

Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet."
How comes it that in the fierce fighting days the soldiers were so

tuneful, and such scholars? In the first edition of Lovelace's
"Lucasta" there is a flock of recommendatory verses, English, Latin,

even Greek, by the gallant Colonel's mess-mates and comrades. What
guardsman now writes like Lovelace, and how many of his friends

could applaud him in Greek? You, my Gifted, are happily of a
pacific disposition, and tune a gentle lyre. Is it not lucky for

swains like you that the soldiers have quite forsworn sonneting?
When a man was a rake, a poet, a warrior, all in one, what chance

had a peaceful minor poet like you or me, Gifted, against his
charms? Sedley, when sober, must have been an invincible rival--

invincible, above all, when he pretended constancy:
"Why then should I seek further store,

And still make love anew?
When change itself can give no more

'Tis easy to be true."
How infinitely more delightful, musical, and captivating are those

Cavalier singers--their numbers flowing fair, like their scented
lovelocks--than the prudish society poets of Pope's day. "The Rape

of the Lock" is very witty, but through it all don't you mark the
sneer of the contemptuous, unmanly little wit, the crooked dandy?

He jibes among his compliments; and I do not wonder that Mistress
Arabella Fermor was not conciliated by his long-drawn cleverness and

polished lines. I prefer Sackville's verses "written at sea the
night before an engagement":

"To all you ladies now on land
We men at sea indite."

They are all alike, the wits of Queen Anne; and even Matt Prior,
when he writes of ladies occasionally, writes down to them, or at

least glances up very saucily from his position on his knees. But
Prior is the best of them, and the most candid:

"I court others in verse--but I love thee in prose;
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart."

Yes, Prior is probably the greatest of all who dally with the light
lyre which thrills to the wings of fleeting Loves--the greatest

English writer of vers de societe; the most gay, frank, good-
humoured, tuneful and engaging.

Landor is great, too, but in another kind; the bees that hummed over
Plato's cradle have left their honey on his lips; none but Landor,

or a Greek, could have written this on Catullus:
"Tell me not what too well I know

About the Bard of Sirmio -
Yes, in Thalia's son

Such stains there are as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face

With nectar, and runs on!"
That is poetry deserving of a place among the rarest things in the

Anthology. It is a sorrow to me that I cannot quite place Praed
with Prior in my affections. With all his gaiety and wit, he

wearies one at last with that clever, punning antithesis. I don't
want to know how

"Captain Hazard wins a bet,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry" -

and I prefer his sombre "Red Fisherman," the idea of which is
borrowed, wittingly or unwittingly, from Lucian.

Thackeray, too careless in his measures, yet comes nearer Prior in
breadth of humour and in unaffected tenderness. Who can equal that

song, "Once you come to Forty Year," or the lines on the Venice
Love-lamp, or the "Cane-bottomed Chair"? Of living English writers

of verse in the "familiar style," as Cowper has it, I prefer Mr.
Locker when he is tender and not untouched with melancholy, as in

"The Portrait of a Lady," and Mr. Austin Dobson, when he is not
flirting, but in earnest, as in the "Song of Four Seasons" and "The

Dead Letter." He has ingenuity, pathos, mastery of his art, and,
though the least pedantic of poets, is "conveniently learned."

Of contemporary Americans, if I may be frank, I prefer the verse of
Mr. Bret Harte, verse with so many tunes and turns, as comic as the