exactly on the plan, though not with the agility and skill, of the cadences in Moore's Lalla Rookh:— "Who has not heard of the | vale of Cash | mere?" And this was a discovery, which, if we may attribute it to Waller, raises him to the dignity of a poetical Columbus. But this is in itself a dubious and apparently accidental thing; Waller attained it almost by chance, through his surprising quickness of ear in imitation, but he does not seem to have known what he had found, nor to have tried to repeat his experiment. Cleveland, on the other hand, deliberately studied, not once, but repeatedly, dactylic effects of a really very delicate kind. The first edition of Cleveland's Poems was published in 1647; but on this we can build no theory of Waller's priority of composition. Born eight years earlier than Cleveland, Waller is likely to have been first in the field. But as Cleveland's lyrical poems are, I believe, practically unknown even to scholars, and as this point of the introduction of the triple cadence is one of the greatest interest, I will quote one or two examples. In a strange, half-mad, indecorous lyric called Mark Anthony, I find these lines :— "When as the nightingale chanted her vespers, And the wild forester crouched on the ground, Venus invited me in th' evening whispers Unto a fragrant field with roses crowned." This drags a little; but the intention is incontestable. This is better:: "Mystical grammar of amorous glances, Feeling of pulses, the physic of love, Another poem, called Square-Cap, evidently written at Cambridge in the author's undergraduate days, gives us a totally distinct variety of the anapæstic cadence : "Come hither Apollo's bouncing girl, And in a whole Hippocrene of Sherry, Tuning our pipes to make ourselves merry ; She, she is my mistress, her suitors are many, There is quite a ring of John Byrom 1 The cantering measure, in its prettiest form, however, first appears in our literature in one of the "terrestrial hymns and carnal I have permitted myself to dwell a little on these characteristics of Cleveland, although the great movement which we are considering swept by him. It swept still more impetuously past another man, who, being born a generation later, attempted to move the body of English poetry when it had gained a still greater impetus in the classical direction. Of Dr Robert Wild, author of the Iter Boreale, extremely little is known. He was a Nonconformist divine, and a free lance in politics, ready to attack either side on a slight provocation. Although in the nature of his talent he closely resembled Cleveland, they were at the extreme ends of opposite camps, and Wild's chief occupation was the defence of the Presbyterians, as it was Cleveland's chief delight to attack them. ejaculations" of Alexander Radcliffe, a very clever but most disreputable literary soldier of the Restoration. One of his songs, in The Ramble, 1682, runs thus: Away with these fellows' contriving, They've spoilt all our pleasant design, This sounds like a far away premonition of Praed. Indeed, it seems to have been a couplet of Cleveland's: "Had Cain been Scot God would have changed his doom, Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home'," which aroused the indignation that brought forth Wild's most successful verses, the Iter Boreale. During the anarchical protectorate of Richard Cromwell, Wild was certainly the most popular living English poet. His verse, full of local and momentary allusions, was inspired by the rage and doubt that occupied men's minds, and when at last he celebrated the winter journey of General Monk in 1659 in a long poem, which was really a manifesto against Lambert and the Cabal, his popularity among the party now in the ascendant was overwhelming. The Iter Boreale is a deliberate attempt, as I read it, to foist Monk2 upon the English nation as a successor to Oliver Cromwell, perhaps as a to Charles I., with a happy side successor 1 From The Rebel Scot. The influence of this and other satires of Cleveland upon the style of Dryden deserves close attention. "Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!" is an example of pure pre-Drydenic Dryden. But Marvel was Cleveland's most direct pupil in satire. 2 "MONK! the great Monk! that syllable outshines suggestion that if this is not welcome to the public, "We have another Charles to fetch from Spain." Wild, in this boisterous and vigorous poem, shows himself the immediate harbinger of the Restoration. The pieces by which during ten years past he had won the favour of the public have, some of them, a more genuine poetical merit. His writing is mostly in heroic couplets, of the kind Cleveland had used, less straggling and licentious in form than the old verse, but full of abbreviations and rude transpositions of accent1. He was not ignorant of the great changes which were being introduced into English prosody, nor did he wholly reject them. He does not, so far as I remember, mention any poets of the romantic school; but he speaks of Denham, Cowley, and Davenant in terms of surly respect, and acknowledges their poetic supremacy, even while he satirizes them, while for Waller,— 1 These peculiarities are easily exemplified. For instance: "Yet, yet he liv'd, stout heart, he liv'd to be Wars, blazing stars, torches, which Heaven nev'r burns Wild: On the Death of Mr Calamy. |