in 1632, before Charles and his queen by the students of Trinity College; and a graceful pastoral play, "Amyntas," acted before the king and queen at Whitehall, and first printed in 1638. Among Randolph's songs and poems is one to Ben Jonson, who loved him and other of the bright young poets of the day, and called them sons. I was not born, he says, to Helicon;

"But thy adoption quits me of all fear,

And makes me challenge a child's portion there.

I am akin to heroes, being thine,

And part of my alliance is divine."

18. Sir William Davenant, who was born in 1606, and died in 1668, and who personally knew both Shakespeare and Dryden, may be regarded as the connecting link between the Elizabethan dramatists and the dramatists of the Restoration. He began to write plays in his youth, and he continued to write them in his old age. He will be more particularly dealt with under the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century.

CHAPTER V.

FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: POETRY CHIEFLY NON-DRAMATIC.

1. Samuel Daniel.· .-2. Michael Drayton.-3. William Browne.-4. Giles Fletcher; Phineas Fletcher.-5. George Wither.-6. William Drummond.-7. Later Euphuism in Poetry.-8. John Donne.-9. Thomas Coryat; John Taylor.10. Francis Quarles.-11. George Herbert.-12. Bichard Crashaw. - 13. Character Poetry; Overbury; Habington; Earle.-14. The Translators; George Chapman; George Sandys; Barten Holyday.—15. Wits, Satirists, and Song-Writers; Joseph Hall. — - 16. Sir John Harington.—17. Richard Corbet. -18. John Cleveland.-19. Thomas Carew.-20. Sir John Denham.-21. Sir John Suckling.-22. William Cartwright.—23. Richard Lovelace.—24. Robert Herrick.-25. The Position of John Milton in Literature; His Earlier Poetry.

1. Samuel Daniel was born near Taunton, in 1562, the son of a music-master. From 1579 to 1582 he was studying as a commoner at Magdalene Hall, Oxford, but he did not take a degree. In 1585, at the age of twenty-three, he translated from the Italian "The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius, contayning a Discourse of rare Inventions, both Militarie and Amorous, called Impresse. Whereunto is added a Preface, contayning the Arte of Composing them, with many other Notable Devises." Daniel became tutor to the Lady Anne Clifford, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, and became historian and poet under the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke's family. He began his career as an original poet, strongly influenced by the Italian writers, in 1592, with "Delia: contayning certayne Sonnets, with the Complaint of Rosamond." This he dedicated to Mary, Countess of Pembroke, Sidney's sister; augmented editions, bringing the number of sonnets to fiftyseven, followed in 1594 and 1595. In 1595, Daniel combined his functions of historian and poet by publishing "The First Fowre Books of the Civille Warres betweene the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke." This poem is in stanzas of the

octave rhyme, established by Boccaccio as the Italian measure for narrative poetry, used by Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso. Strongly influenced by Italian forms, and often paraphrasing and translating from Italian, Daniel took naturally to octave rhyme for his poem on the civil wars. It was, like Sackville's tragedy of Buckingham, in the "Mirror for Magistrates," too much of a history to be a poem in the true artistic sense; but it was musical in versification, patriotic and religious, and somewhat diffuse in moralizing, with so much of the conservative tone, that, in church matters, some thought Daniel inclined towards Catholicism. In 1597 appeared his "Tragedy of Philotas;" in 1599, "Musophilus," and other Poetical Essayes." The poem on the civil wars was also extended to five books in 1599; a sixth book followed in 1602. Daniel's "Musophilus" was a general defence of learning in dialogue between Philocosmus, a lover of the world, and Musophilus, a lover of the Muses. It has been said that after the death of Spenser, in 1599, Daniel succeeded him as poet-laureate. But there was in Elizabeth's time no recognized court office of poet-laureate. He wrote in prose a "Collection of the History of England," first published in 1613 and 1618. It begins with Roman Britain, and ends with the reign of Edward III.

2. Michael Drayton, born at Hartshill, Warwickshire, was of about the same age as Daniel, but a poet with more sensibility, more vigor and grace of thought. Like Daniel, he began to write after 1590, and became a busy poet. He is said to have been maintained for a time at Oxford by Sir Henry Goodere, of Polsworth, and he had a friend and patron in Sir Walter Aston, of Tixhall, in Staffordshire. In 1591, Drayton began his career as poet with a sacred strain: "The Harmony of the Church, containing the Spiritual Songs and Holy Hymns of Godly Men, Patriarchs, and Prophets, all sweetly sounding to the Glory of the Highest." This was followed, in 1593, by Idea; the Shepherd's Garland, fashioned in Nine Eclogues; ""Rowland's Sacrifice to the Nine Muses;" in 1594, by his "Matilda," and his " Idea's Mirror, Amours in Quatorzains." In 1596, "Matilda" re-appeared in a volume which showed Drayton's Muse to be then running parallel with Dan

A

iel's in choice of subject, and to be passing from love pastorals and sonnets to a strain from the past history of England. year after Daniel's "Civil Wars" appeared Drayton's “Tragical Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy, with the Legend of Matilda the Chaste, Daughter of the Lord Robert Fitzwater, poysoned by King John; and the Legend of Piers Gaveston, the latter two by him newly corrected and augmented; " and in the same year, 1596,-year of the second part of "The Faery Queen," and of Spenser's last publications, appeared Drayton's "Mortimeriados: the Lamentable Civell Warres of Edward the Second and the Barrons," a poem afterwards known as the "Barons' Wars." It was in stanzas of octave rhyme, like that pocm on the civil wars of Lancaster and York which Daniel had published in part, and was still at work upon. The poets chose these themes because they yielded much reverse of fortune that could point a moval in the spirit illustrated by the still popular Mirror for Magistrates." In 1598 Drayton again made poetry of history by publishing their idea taken from Ovid-" England's Heroical Epistles; letters from Rosamond to Henry II. and from Henry II. to Rosamond, with like pairs of letters between King John and Matilda, Mortimer and Queen Isabel, and so forth. At the accession of James I., Drayton wrote "To the Majestie of King James; a Gratulatore Poem," but turned from the king disappointed; published, in 1604, his fable of "The Owle;" and in 1607 the "Legend of Great Cromwell," which appeared again in 1609 as "The Historie of the Life and Death of the Lord Cromwell, some time Earl of Essex and Lord Chancellor of England." In 1613 appeared his "Polyolbion " (the word means Many-ways-Happy), a poetical description of his native land, in nearly sixteen thousand lines of Alexandrine verse, with maps of counties, and antiquarian notes by the author's friend, John Selden. This poem was another illustration of the quickened patriotism of the English. Thus Drayton sang when he came to his own county of Warwick, that he and Shakespeare loved :

"My native country, then, which so brave spirits hast bred,
If there be virtues yet remaining in thy earth,

Or any good of thine thou bredst into my birth,

ccept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee,

Of all the later brood the unworthiest though I be."

3. William Browne, born in 1590, at Tavistock, in Devonshire, studied at Exeter College, Oxford, then went to the Inner Temple, and in 1613, the year of the appearance of Drayton's "Polyolbion," pro-| duced, at the age of twenty-three, the first part of his "Britannia's Pastorals," partly written before he was twenty. "The Shepherd's Pipe," in seven eclogues, followed in 1614. In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, appeared the second part of Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals." The two parts were published together about the end of James's reign, and about the same time their author went back to Exeter College as tutor to Robert Dormer, Earl of Carnarvon. His pleasant pastoral strain touched but lightly upon the realities of life. The rustic manner showed the influence of Spenser, but in James's reign this influence was greatest on Giles Fletcher.

4. Giles Fletcher, who was brother to Phineas Fletcher, the poet, and cousin to John Fletcher, the dramatist, was at Trinity College, Cambridge, when he contributed a canto to the collection of verses, "Sorrow's Joy," on the death of Elizabeth and accession of James, published by the printer to the university in 1603. He took the degree of B.D. at Trinity College, and held the living of Alderton, in Suffolk, till his death, in 1623. It was not until after the death of Giles that his elder brother, Phineas, appeared in print as a poet; though in one of his poems Giles spoke of his brother as young Thyrsilis, the Kentish lad that lately taught

"His oaten reed the trumpet's silver sound."

Giles Fletcher published at Cambridge, in 1610, when he was about six and twenty, a devout poem on "Christ's Victory and Triumph over and after Death," in an original eight-lined stanza, suggested by Spenser's, but not happily constructed. For five lines the stanza followed Spenser, and then came a triplet, of which the last line was an Alexandrine, as in the Spenserian stanza. Thus:

"At length an aged sire far off he saw

Come slowly footing; every step he guess'd
One of his feet he from the grave did draw;

Three legs he had, that made of wood was best;

And all the way he went he ever blest