and far-fetched imagery of the metaphysical school, are the following stanzas of a song by Carew: "Ask me no more where Jove bestows, These flowers, as in their causes, sleep! Ask me no more whither doth haste She winters and keeps warm her note;" and so forth. It was Suckling who sang merrily: His lively Ballad upon a Wedding is one of the brightest and prettiest of the graceful compositions of the group. His description of the bride is often quoted : Lovelace strikes a higher note in his verses To Lucasta on Going to the Wars: "True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; ROBERT HERRICK And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such As you, too, shall adore: I could not love you, dear, so much, 205 1591-1674. The vigorous, hearty spirit of Herrick's verse still keeps the fame of that lusty poet green. He Robert is the foremost of the minor writers in this Herrick, seventeenth century group. A student and fellow at the University of Cambridge for fourteen years, and afterward a clergyman in a quiet vicarage of Devon, there is much in his very lively verse to suggest other than the studious or clerical profession. In spirit Herrick was thoroughly Elizabethan. Corinna's Going a-Maying is one of his best known lyrics: is Herrick's advice "to the virgins, to make much of time." "Then be not coy, but use your time And while ye may, goe marry; It was Herrick, too, who described his verse and, incidentally, that of his brother minstrels in these lines : "I sing of brooks, of blossomes, birds, and bowers; Of April, May, of June, and July flowers; I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes; There is no indication in his writings that he was moved by the momentous events of the days in which he lived. There is much of the "joy of mere living," and a frequent turning into vulgar sensuality. His most characteristic poems are contained in his Hesperides. The collection entitled Noble Numbers consists of devotional songs on the subject of Christ's birth and passion. Edmund Waller, the last of the metaphysical Edmund Waller, 1605-87. poets, was a Royalist, like most of the group; but he served the Commonwealth as readily as the Crown, and his reputation is that of a turncoat and a coward. Waller was master of an eloquent tongue and a lively wit; he was distinguished as an orator and a versifier. Having indited a famous Panegyric to the great Oliver, he greeted Charles II. with flattering congratulation Upon His Majesty's Happy Return. When the king called the poet's attention to the fact that the earlier poem was clearly the better of the two, Waller at once replied, "Poets, sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth." Waller's favorite verse form was the rhymed couplet, which appears so conspicuously in the poetry of the succeeding age. His influence upon the next great poet, John Dryden, was very marked. John IV. THE RESTORATION: BUNYAN, DRYDEN. In November, 1628, while John Milton was about finishing his third year of university life at Cambridge, John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a village in Bedfordshire, not many miles from Cambridge on the west. There was a sharp contrast in the conditions that ruled the lives of these two men, and yet the son of the Elstow tinker was destined to find a place in literature not far below that filled by the great Puritan poet himself. Early Life. Bunyan's school days were few and unproductive. Such school training as he gained he had at the Bedford Grammar School, and the little he learned he declares that he soon lost. His true education came through his contact with men. "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato," he writes; "but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen." Thomas Bunyan, the father of John, describes himself as a "braseyer." There was a forge in the little cottage occupied by him and his family at Elstow, and at this forge John Bunyan, too, was taught his father's trade. The brazier, or tinker, of that day was often upon the road, a not unwelcome visitant at the isolated farms, where there was plenty of work to his hand in the mending of utensils and tools. Convivial and careless in their habits, these men usually partook of the vagabond type, and although John Bunyan affirms that he was never a drunkard and never unchaste, he declares that, even as a child, he "had few equals in swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God." At sixteen years of age Bunyan became a soldier in the Civil War. It is not altogether certain on which side he served, but the presumption is that he was drafted into Cromwell's army, and that he fought under the leadership of Sir Samuel Luke, the prominent parliamentarian of Bedford, the reputed original of Butler's Hudibras. Bunyan's military career was brief, for the campaign was closed at Naseby, some six months after he entered the army. Occasional reminders of this period are to be found in Bunyan's works, as in the description of the combat with Apollyon, and the taking of the town of Mansoul, in The Holy War. In 1646 Bunyan resumed his trade at Elstow, and two or three years later he married. His wife was a pious woman as poor as himself; her dowry consisted of two religious books then popular, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety. "In these," says Bunyan, " I should sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me." Peculiar The next four years of Bunyan's life were characterized by peculiar mental and spiritual experiences. Intensely sensitive by temperament, Experiences. and gifted with an imagination abnormally active, he now passed through a period of religious struggle so vivid and so acute that his impressions became realities; their effects were profound. Most of the indulgences that he reckoned sins were no more serious than the ringing of the church bells and participation in the dancing and other Sunday sports upon the village common. But these amusements were looked upon by the pious Puritans as dangerous vanities, likely to distract the soul from its proper aims, and therefore frowned upon and rebuked; and so, one Sunday while engaged in some game on Elstow Green, he tells us, "A voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my soul, which said, Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to Hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding maze. Wherefore I looked up to Heaven and was as if I had with the eyes of my understanding seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me as being very hotly displeased with me." One morning, going into Bedford, he overheard three or four poor women talking together by a cottage door in the sunshine. They were speaking of the Christian life, and again his sensitive conscience was stirred. Once more he came to listen to the women's talk, and there was born in him "a great softness and tenderness of heart, and a great bending in his mind" toward holy thoughts. |