that polished banter, which gave to Dryden his extraordinary influence as a satirist.

A few years before the Revolution, two peers distinguished themselves above their meaner contemporaries by producing certain critical pamphlets in verse, which were of a kind new in English, and which have preserved a niche for their authors in the history of literature. Of these two writers the one who most nearly deserves the title of poet is John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), celebrated in Absalom and Achitophel as "sharp-judging Adriel, the muses' friend, Himself a muse." Mulgrave circulated in 1679 an Essay on Satire, and published in 1682 an Essay on Poetry, both in heroic verse. These pieces were anonymous, and they were so cleverly versified that the town insisted on thinking that Dryden was their author. In consequence of the following passage in the Essay on Satire, the Earl of Rochester had Dryden cruelly beaten by a troop of hired bravos, in a narrow street off Covent Garden, on a winter's night in 1679:

"Last enter Rochester, of sprightly wit,
Yet not for converse safe, or business fit;
Mean in each action, lewd in every limb,
Manners themselves are mischievous in him ;
A gloss he gives to ev'ry foul design,
And we must own his very vices shine;

But of this odd ill-nature to mankind

Himself alone the ill effects will find:

So envious hags in vain their witchcraft try,
Yet for intended mischief justly die."

Mulgrave's Essay on Poetry contains some terse and effective lines, one or two of which have passed into current use. He lays down sensible rules for practitioners in the various departments of poetic art, but he was not very successful himself in the composition of odes, tragedies, and epistles. Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1634-1685) was a man who spent the greater part of his life in France, and was steeped in the erudition of the French Jesuits. About 1670 he wrote a short critical poem, called an Essay

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on Translated Verse, which he was persuaded to print in 1680. It is in heroic couplets, but towards the close Roscommon expresses himself strongly in favour of the "Roman majesty" of blank verse, and gives a sort of précis of the sixth book of Paradise Lost in that measure. In 1684 he published a paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry in blank verse, and Roscommon is remarkable as the only writer between Milton and the end of the century who discarded rhyme in serious non-dramatic verse.

A word must be said here about the songs which continued to be written almost to the very end of the century, and sometimes with extraordinary charm. Dryden's contributions to this class of poetry have already been mentioned. The Cavalier lyrists of the age of Charles I. bequeathed not a little of their skill to the best of their successors, at least until the Revolution. The finest songs of the Restoration are those of a very infamous person, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), but Aphra Behn, Sedley, Lord Dorset (1637-1706), and Etheredge all wrote well-turned verses of this class with considerable charm and grace. These are examples from Mrs. Behn and Rochester respectively:

"Love in fantastic triumph sat,

Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,
For whom fresh pains he did create,

And strange tyrannic power he showed;
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,
Which round about in sport he hurled ;
But 'twas from mine he took desires
Enough to undo the amorous world.

"From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty,
From me his languishment and fears,
And every killing dart from thee;
Thus thou, and I, the god have armed,
And set him up a deity,

But my poor heart alone is harmed,

While thine the victor is, and free."

GARTH

"My dear Mistress has a heart

Soft as those kind looks she gave me
When, with love's resistless art,

And her eyes, she did enslave me ;
But her constancy's so weak,

She's so wild and apt to wander,
That my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder.

"Melting joys about her move,

Killing pleasures, wounding blisses,
She can dress her eyes in love,

And her lips can arm with kisses;

Angels listen when she speaks,

;

She's my delight, all mankind's wonder,

But my jealous heart would break

Should we live one day asunder."

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All through the seventeenth century the lamp of Doric song was kept alight in Scotland by one interesting family, the Sempills of Beltrees, who passed it on from father to son. Francis Sempill, who died about 1683, was the author of the original version of Auld Langsyne, which he opens thus:

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never thought upon?
The flames of love extinguished,
And freely past and gone?

Is thy kind heart now grown sae cauld,
In that loving breast o' thine,
That thou can'st never ance reflect

On auld langsyne?"

It is instructive to compare this with Burns's celebrated adaptation of the same theme.

Towards the close of the century there came forward two interesting writers with a notice of whom we may close this branch of our inquiry. Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1719) was a resident fellow of a Cambridge college, until, in mature life, he became a physician, and was called up to London to administer that newly-founded dispensary in the College of Physicians in which

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gratuitous advice was given to the poor. The apothecaries viciously attacked the pious work of charity, and Garth held their meanness up to ridicule in a mock-heroic poem, The Dispensary (1699), which passed through a great number of editions. It was through the zeal of Garth that Dryden received due honour in burial; and he was prominent in founding the Kit-Kat Club. In 1715 his topographical poem of Claremont appeared, in direct emulation of Denham's Cooper's Hill. The fun has all faded out of The Dispensary, and Garth is no longer in the least degree attractive. But his didactic verse is the best between Dryden and Pope, though we see beginning in it the degradation of the overmannered style of the eighteenth century. In the fourth canto of the Dispensary Garth sums up, with all his characteristic good nature, and more vivacity than usual, the condition of English poetry at the close of the seventeenth century:

"Mortal, how dar'st thou with such lies address

My awful seat, and trouble my recess?

In Essex marshy hundreds is a cell,

Where lazy fogs, and drizzling vapours dwell:
Thither raw damps on drooping wings repair,
And shiv'ring quartans shake the sickly air.
There, when fatigu'd, some silent hours I pass,
And substitute physicians in my place;
Then dare not, for the future, once rehearse
The dissonance of such unequal verse;

But in your lines let energy be found,
And learn to rise in sense, and sink in sound.
Harsh words, tho' pertinent, uncouth appear,
None please the fancy, who offend the ear;
In sense and numbers if you wou'd excel,
Read Wycherley, consider Dryden well;
In one, what vigorous turns of fancy shine,
In th' other, syrens warble in each line;
If Dorset's sprightly muse but touch the lyre,
The smiles and Graces melt in soft desire,
And little Loves confess their amorous fire.
The Tiber now no courtly Gallus sees,
But smiling Thames enjoys his Normanbys;

I

LADY WINCHELSEA

And gentle Isis claims the ivy crown,

To bind th' immortal brows of Addison;

As tuneful Congreve tries his rural strains,

Pan quits the woods, the list’ning fauns the plains;
And Philomel, in notes like his, complains;

And Britain, since Pausanias was writ,

Knows Spartan virtue, and Athenian wit,

When Stepney paints the godlike acts of kings,

Or, what Apollo dictates, Prior sings:

The banks of Rhine a pleased attention show,

And silver Sequana forgets to flow.'

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Of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), it is impossible to say whether she was the last of the old or the first of the new romantic school. At a period when the study of external nature was completely excluded from poetry, Lady Winchelsea introduced into her verses novel images taken directly from rustic life as she saw it round about her. Her Nocturnal Reverie has been highly praised by Wordsworth, and is a singularly beautiful description of the sights and sounds that attend a summer night in the country:

"In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heavens' mysterious face,
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen,
When freshened grass now bears itself upright,
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence spring the woodbine, and the bramble-rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows,
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes,

Where scattered glow-worms,—but in twilight fine,—
Shew trivial beauties, watch their hour to shine,
While Salisbury stands the test of every light,
In perfect charms and perfect beauty bright;
When odours, which declined repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darkened groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;
When through the gloom more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric awful in repose;