The founder of that school of Metaphysical Poets, so well known to us from Johnson's " Life of Cowley," was Donne, born the year before Ben Jonson. Donne, whose biography by Izaak Walton is one of the most delightful books we have, was a pious, learned man, of great wit and intellectual subtlety. This is the peculiarity of the man, and was of the school. They were good loving men, like their neighbours. Old Donne made a thorough love-match ; but when he celebrated the passion of love in song, he and his disciples did so in their caps and gowns, and robes. When the heart of a "Metaphysical Poet" was taken by storm, the intellect like Archimedes, when Syracuse was taken-remained employed in the subtlest exercise in the very heat of the capture. Fancy a lady being addressed thus. We quote from Donne. He is speaking of the souls of himself and his lady-love.

"If they be two, they are two so,

As stiff twin-compasses are two:
My soul the fixed foot makes no show
To move, but doth if t'other do.

"And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.

"Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like t'other foot obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun."

In another poem he tells us that his affection had grown "corpulent," and he was obliged to limit it to "a sigh a day!"

Donne was much admired, and by nobody more than by Ben Jonson. Of Ben's own songs, the famous one, beginning

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,"

is too well known to need repetition. The first great name of Donne's school was Crashaw-the pious wit who wrote of the holiest subjects in epigrams. But here are two very sweet little stanzas of song by him :

"We go not to seek

The darlings of Aurora's bed,

The rose's modest cheek,

Nor the violet's humble head;

No such thing; we go to meet
A worthier object, our Lord's feet."

Tennyson has, by a coincidence,

"April in her tender eyes,"

in his "In Memoriam." Crashaw was a gentle, saintly spirit. He abandoned the Protestant for the Catholic Church, without losing the veneration of his friends, and died at Loretto. Cowley wrote a beautiful poem on his death, and was, indeed, himself one of the same school.

Your Donnes and Crashaws, however, are too weighty writers to swim. They loaded their works with learning, wit, fancy, cumbrously. Their great reputations have gone down as the "Royal George" did, and only a few adventurers dive occasionally to bring something up from the wreck. We must look at more genial men; at Herrick, Waller, Suckling; the song-writers of the Civil War days. These were more men of the world; men of " wit and pleasure." Most of the song-writers in that century were Cavaliers; vivacious gentlemen, who, when the King's cause grew desperate, fell with redoubled energy on the bottle. Alexander Brome proceeded, instanter, to call on that old friend for inspiration and consolation, whenever the Royal party suffered a reverse.

Waller ranks, by general consent, among the earliest improvers of the music of our versification, and there is one song of his so charming, that it appears in almost every collection of merit, from Campbell's "Beauties" downwards.*

Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

"Then, die! that she,

The common fate of all things rare,
May read in thee-

How small a part of time they share
That are so wond'rous sweet and fair."

Herrick has signalised himself by the finest "Anacre

ontic" in our language. I mean the one beginning,

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may:

Old Time is still a-flying,

And the same flower that blooms to day,

To-morrow will be dying."

Here is a pretty love conceit.

"TO ELECTRA.

"I dare not ask a kiss,

I dare not beg a smile,
Lest having that or this,

I might grow proud the while

"No, no! the utmost share
Of my desire shall be,
Only to kiss that air
That lately kissed thee!"

The most remarkable instances of the wonderful adroitness of his fancy are found in his little poem on Fairies. His fancy was redundant; he speaks of a "coy girl," who he says

"Strings my tears as pearl."

Herrick's "Hesperides" came out in 1648. There is a freshness about his strains which carries one back to the Shakspearean days. In his views of scenery, in his dalliance with flowers and love thoughts, his truthful poetry alternates between the dashing wit of "Mermaid" talk and the bright freshness of the country.

I scarcely know whether the following lines can be said to constitute " a song." I extract them from that part of the " Hesperides" which is devoted to religious subjects. The original edition of 1648, with its quaint type and spelling, and its dedication to Prince Charles (Herrick was a Royalist), is before me.

"THE ROSE.

"Before Man's fall, the Rose was born,
(St. Ambrose says) without the thorn;
But for man's fault then was the thorn
Without the fragrant rose-bud-born,
But ne'er the rose without the thorn."

I pass by the songs, which we all know, of the great intellect of the century; the song which calls "Echo" from the haunts of the "love-lorn nightingale," &c.; the song which summons "Sabrina fair" from the "glassy, cool, translucent wave," wherein she shall be seen for ever. No one needs now to be told of them.

Dryden has not left us a good song in all his family of volumes. His songs are of the Sham-Pastoral School. Here is a very characteristic one by Sir John Suckling, the convivial, sincere, and stanch royalist, who raised a troop of horse for the King at his own expense. It represents very well the tone of his school-easy, flippant-not ungentlemanly, but not very exalted.