quality of the lyrical poetry therein is far inferior to similar productions in the preceding reigns, as the popular taste had turned from sentiment and poetry to the wit and ribaldry of the tavern.1

At the accession of Charles, Ben Jonson had twelve years yet to live; and, although his best work was now done, his position as the great literary dictator, with the added sanction of court patronage, produced a powerful effect upon the imaginations of scholarly and courtly young men. Poets and dramatists spoke of themselves as "sons of Ben," delighting in his society while he lived, and honoring his memory when he died. Six months after his death a volume appeared, entitled Jonsonus Virbius, in which peers and commons, bishops and laymen united to celebrate in verses English, Latin, and Greek, the greatness of the deceased laureate, and to express the esteem and veneration in which they held him as a man.2 English literature knows no other such tribute; it is above many monuments. Let us glance at the contributors to Jonsonus Virbius, for among them are some of the most characteristic, if not the greatest, of the "sons of Ben." First is the amiable and accomplished Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, in bravery, courtesy, loyalty, all but literature although a graceful poet—the Sidney of his age; next, the genial and kindly Henry King, later Bishop of Chichester, author of the best lines of the volume; Thomas May, Shak

1 The quantity of this "literature" is very great, and much of it has little but an historical and social value. One of the most characteristic collections is Wit's Recreations, first published in 1641, and going through nearly a dozen editions before the close of the century. Other miscellanies were Wit Restored, Wit and Drollery, The Loyal Garland, The Muses' Recreation. The song books of the period begin with Hilton's Book of Airs, 1627, and extend through innumerable songs, airs, and dialogues to Dr. Purcell's Collection of Airs, 1697.

2 Jonsonus Virbius is reprinted in the collected editions of Jonson by Whalley, Gifford, and Cunningham.

erley Marmion, Jasper Mayne, and William Cartwright, all dramatists of repute, some of them writing into Restoration times, the last a consummate master of panegyric and a lyric and elegiac poet after the manner of his other master, Donne. James Howell, the author of the charming Epistolae Ho-Elianae, long intimate with Jonson, contributes a few lines; as do John Clieveland, the trenchant loyalist satirist; Sir John Beaumont, cousin of the dramatist, a poet chiefly by kinship; Habington, author of Castara; and Buckhurst, descendant of the author of Gorboduc, and father of Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the courtly poet of the next reign. John Ford, the great dramatist, writes as an equal, not as a "son"; and last comes Edmund Waller, whose contact with earlier poetry is generally forgotten in the fact that he is the historical link between the lyric of Jonson and that of the Restoration. Shirley, the last illustrious name of the old drama, does not appear; although a friend of Ford, he was probably without the charmed circle. Neither Herrick nor Carew contribute, though the former, certainly a veritable "son," as several of his poems attest, was now a recluse in "loathed Devonshire "; whilst Carew, an older man, whose occasional verses show close intimacy with Jonson, was to survive but two years.1

If now we look into the contents of a volume of one of these "sons of Ben," we shall find that he has followed his master alike in the diversity and in the limitations of his art. He may give a greater preponderance to one species of verse, but he tries all-drama, the poetical epistle, epigram, lyric song and ode, commendatory verse, prologue and epilogue. The sonnets, pastorals, and madrigals of the past age have been superseded, despite the fact that Habington

1 Cf. Herrick's two epigrams on Jonson, his Prayer to him, and his Ode; ed. Grosart, II, 78, 79, 185; III, 11. See also Carew's To Ben Jonson, ed. Hazlitt, p. 84.

may throw his verses into a kind of irregular sequence and limit some of his poems to fourteen lines, and although Herrick may invent a new and dainty pastoral mode of his own by a fresh return to nature.1 It is notable that few of these

writers of the days of Charles are men of both tongues like Greene, Dekker, or Heywood, who wrote verse and prose, and even mingled them at times in one work. Moreover, not one of these writers was a literary man in the sense which Jonson exemplified, unless we except Howell and Davenant. Falkland, Habington, Carew, Randolph, and Waller were courtiers; Cartwright, Herrick, and King clergymen; Herbert was successively both. Most of those who survived to the civil wars sided with the king or fought for him; not a few fell in his

cause.

But if these writers are the professed 66 sons of Ben" and inherited his love of form, his fondness for learning well displayed, and at times his didacticism and heavy satirical hand, they inherited also, each after his capacity, many of the idiosyncrasies of Donne, their other master; and the idiosyncrasies of Donne are precisely those which are the most dangerous in the hands of mediocrity. It was thus that Donne's extraordinary originality in the invention and application of figure a power which, it is frankly to be confessed, he often used tastelessly and irresponsibly— became the source of Cartwright's lapses from good taste, Crashaw's confusion, and Cowley's irregularity of thought, and the all but universal search after 'conceit' and farfetched imagery. Thus it was that Donne's lordly contempt for mere form came to be made accountable for the slovenly and clumsy carelessness of metre and sense which mars the work of such poets as Suckling and makes the verse of Lovelace, except for some half-dozen lyrics, unreadable. In the contemplation of such aberrations as these, and in

1 Cf. Corinna's Going A-Maying, below, p. 10.

the midst of a complete triumph of principles diametrically opposed to the romantic ideals which had begot this freedom and excess, it was to be expected that the critics of the next century should do injustice to the past. Severe and condemnatory, flippantly patronizing or weakly apologetic—such is the attitude of these and even of later critics as to Donne and his imitators. Rarely has criticism passed beyond the lines so carefully and so perversely drawn by Dr. Samuel Johnson in his famous passage on the "metaphysical poets in his life of Cowley. As this subject is of prime importance in any discussion of the poetry of the seventeenth century, no apology need be offered for quoting once more the familiar words of Dr. Johnson.

"The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavor: but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.

"If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry Téxνn μμntikỲ, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything: they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter nor represented the operations of the intellect.

"Those however who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry." 1

This famous deliverance is a glaring instance of that species of criticism which is worked up out of the critical dicta of others, a mystery not wholly confined to Dr. Johnson

1 Lives of the English Poets, Cowley, ed. Tauchnitz, I, 11.

nor to his age. If now we turn to Dryden's Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire, we shall find the following passage addressed to the Earl of Dorset and concerned mainly with a eulogy of the poetry of that noble author.

"There is more salt in all your verses, than I have seen in any of the moderns, or even of the ancients; but you have been sparing of the gall, by which means you have pleased all readers, and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers, and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. . . . You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and the words. I read you both with the same admiration, but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amourous verses; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softness of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault."2

Several things are to be remarked on this passage: (1) that Donne is only mentioned incidentally, the main purpose being the encomium upon the satire of the noble and now forgotten lord; (2) that the discussion is confined to satire, although a side reference is made to Donne's amorous verse, and Cowley is charged with imitating these products of Donne; (3) that Donne is praised for "variety, multiplicity, and choiceness of thought"; (4) that he is said to be "wanting in dignity of expression" and "in manner and

1 This essay was originally prefixed to the translation of Juvenal (ed. Scott-Saintsbury, XII, 1-123). See also Professor Hales' introductory note to Donne in Ward's English Poets, I, 558. 2 Ibid., p. 6.