Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a State
And Business thou wouldst find, and wouldst create :
Business, the frivolous Pretence

Of human Lusts, to shake off Innocence;

Business, the grave Impertinence !

'Business, the grave Impertinence!'

Is not that

one phrase enough in itself to convict the great lexicographer of either malice or incompetence in writing that Cowley has 'no selection of words'?

There are not a few other poems to which I would gladly invite attention.

But if I am to win friends for Cowley, I must not be tedious. Only I cannot omit by way of bonne bouche two pieces which are always in my own thought, the one written when the poet was a boy, the other when he was old. But side by side they show how thoroughly the child was the father of the man. This is the boy's wish:

This only grant me that my Means may lie
Too low for Envy, for Contempt too high.
Some Honour I would have,

Not from Great Deeds, but Good alone,
The unknown are better than ill known;

Rumour can ope the grave.

Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the Number, but the choice of Friends.

Books should, not Business, entertain the Light,
And Sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.
My House a Cottage more
Than Palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, not Luxury.

My Garden painted o'er

With Nature's hand, not Art's; and Pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine Field.

Thus would I double my Life's fading Space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his Race.
And in this true delight,

These unbought Sports, this happy State,
I would not fear, nor wish, my Fate,

But boldly say each Night,

To-Morrow let my Sun his Beams display,

Or in Clouds hide them; I have liv'd to-Day.

And this is the strain to which he makes his exit:

But his past Life who without Grief can see,
Who never thinks his End too near,

But says to Fame, Thou art mine Heir;
That Man extends Life's natural Brevity;
This is, this is the only way

To out-live Nestor in a Day.

I will only add one word to anyone whom my poor praise may incite to buy a copy of Cowley's poems. You must seek them in the old book shops. Aim at getting the only edition which turned him out like a gentleman-Tonson's three volumes of 1707-and see that all the plates are there, including both Charleses and the Cromwell. There should be, if my reckoning is true, thirty-one.

IV.

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF 'CORNHILL' UPON PATRIOTIC SONGS.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-I want you to condole with me on the extraordinary want there is of patriotic songs capable of moving the masses of the people, notwithstanding that our poets have lately given evidence by poems that have appealed to the leisured classes that they are not wanting in imperial instincts. I was much struck by a letter that appeared lately in the public press from a very promising young poet, who wrote to suggest a comparatively unused topic to writers gravelled for lack of matter. The topic he suggested was Purgatory. I make bold to think the choice unfortunate, not on Protestant but on Platonic grounds. You will recollect a passage in the third book of the 'Republic' where the question is being debated as to the kind of poetry best fitted for the citizens of an ideal State, and you will recall the fact that one of the subjects objected against was this very subject of Purgatory, on the ground that its tendency was to sap courage. After quoting half-a-dozen lines of

Homer about the state of the soul after death, Socrates proceeds: We must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery worse than death. Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which describe the world below. I do not say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some kind; but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them. Another and a nobler strain must be sung by us' (iii. 386, tr. Jowett). Now it is difficult not to agree with Socrates. Let us suppose for a moment that Milton, instead of writing Paradise Lost, which, in Plato's words, 'may have a use of some kind,' had sung in 'another and a nobler strain,' had put his blood, for example, into battle songs of Worcester or Dunbar. Would he not have merited more of an imperial people? And, as he valued the reputation of a practical man, would he not have exercised a more real influence over the course of events than by all his prose pamphlets, which fell still-born from the press? He mightwho knows?-have prevented 'the glorious Restauration,' and spared us some of the most deplorable years in our annals. And yet to speak so is perhaps

to speak unwisely, for a poet gives us what he has it in him to give, even if it be only about Purgatory; and the song which we desiderate-the song that shall fly alive through the lips of men'-is not necessarily within the scope even of those who can write an epic about Hades. I am haunted, indeed, by the suspicion, which you, dear friend, with your wonted good nature, will censure as uncharitable, that the gentleman who expressed a wish to write the songs of the people on condition that he should be released from making the laws, would have written the songs without any such stipulation if only he had found it possible. I take leave to doubt if there are ten members of our own Legislature who could be depended upon for a patriotic song, even if they were guaranteed 'a pair' from now to the end of the session. It might nevertheless be worth Sir William Walrond's while to make the offer. And I firmly hold that it would be worth the Government's while to keep a second-class Poet Laureate for this business, just as the great Dibdin was retained in the last years of the Napoleonic Terror. If you have any weight, therefore, with our young writers, I would beg of you to divert their interests from Purgatory, which could never be made really attractive to the working classes, and centre them instead upon politics, imperial or local. It would be well to disguise the fact, which might deter persons of real genius, that to write a successful song is the readiest way to make a fortune.