She were inspired from Ipswich, she will make The Acts and Monuments in sweetmeats; quinces, Arraigned and burned at a stake; all my banquets Are persecutions; Diocletian's days

Are brought for entertainment; and we eat martyrs. Ban. Madam, she is far gone.

Aur. Nay, sir, she is a Puritan at her needle too. Ban. Indeed!

Aur. She works religious petticoats; for flowers She 'll make church histories. Her needle doth

So sanctify my cushionets! Besides,
My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries,
And are so learned that I fear, in time,
All my apparel will be quoted by
Some pure instructor. Yesterday I went
To see a lady that has a parrot; my woman,
While I was in discourse, converted the fowl;
And now it can speak nought but Knox's works;
So there's a parrot lost.

Are married, madam; of a quick-feigning head?
Aur. You wrong me, Bannswright: she whom I
would have

Must to her handsome shape have virtue too.
Ban. Well, madam, I shall fit you. I do know
A choleric lady which, within these three weeks,
Has, for not cutting her corns well, put off
Three women; and is now about to part
With the fourth--just one of your description.
Next change o' th' moon or weather, when her feet
Do ache again, I do believe I shall

Thomas Killigrew (1612-83), son of a knight and courtier of Cornish family, was born in London, and served as page in the household of Charles I. Afterwards a dissolute companion of Charles II. in exile and his groom of the bedchamber after the Restoration, he in 1660 received a patent along with D'Avenant to erect two new theatres and raise two new companies of actors, and finally superseded his rivals as Master of the Revels. His patent secured for him the right-new in England -to give the female parts to women. The plays include tragedies, tragi-comedies, and comedies, some of them apparently not intended for the stage. They were all printed in folio in 1664. The Parson's Wedding, reprinted by Dodsley, is outrageously coarse, and tedious as well, though not without jokes, some of which Congreve copied or imitated. A study of the plays seems to justify one part of Denham's criticism:

Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killigrew ne'er writ,
Combined in one they'd made a matchless wit;

yet his credit as a wit was high, in spite of Denham and his own plays.-His son, Thomas Killigrew the younger (1657–1719), was groom of the chamber to the Prince of Wales (George II.) when he published the trifling but amusing comedy Chit Chat. The elder Killigrew's brother, sir William Killigrew (1606-95), fought in the Civil War, and wrote a comedy, Pandora, and three tragicomedies, Selindra, Ormasdes, and The Siege of Urbin.

William Cartwright (1611-43) was admitted to the inner circle of Ben Jonson, who said of him, 'My son Cartwright writes all like a man.' His contemporaries loved him living, and deplored his early death. Born at Northway, near Tewkesbury, he was the son of an innkeeper at Cirencester who had squandered away a patrimonial estate. In 1635, after completing his education at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, Cartwright took holy orders; and as a zealous royalist he was imprisoned by the Parliamentary forces when they arrived in Oxford in 1642. In 1643, when he was chosen junior proctor of the university, and was also reader in metaphysics, he was said to have studied sixteen hours a day. Stricken with the malignant fever or 'camp-disease' prevalent The at Oxford, he died November 23, 1643king, who was then at Oxford, went into mourning for his death; and when his works were published in 1651, no less than fifty-six copies of encomiastic verses were prefixed to them by the wits and scholars of the time, including Dr Fell (who was not always so amiable!), Vaughan

the Silurist, and Izaak Walton.

It is difficult to conceive, after reading Cartwright's works, why he should have obtained such extraordinary applause and reputation. His pieces are mostly short occasional poems, panegyrics of the king and royal family, addresses to ladies, noblemen, and his brother - poets Fletcher and Jonson, or slight amatory effusions not distinguished for elegance or fancy, though their conceits entitle him to a conspicuous place in the 'fantastic school.' His youthful virtues, his learning and loyalty, his singularly handsome person and winning manners, seem to have mainly contributed to his popularity, and his premature death would renew and deepen the impression of his gifts and graces. reported by Anthony Wood 'the most florid and seraphic preacher in the university.' Cartwright was only twenty-six when Ben Jonson died, and the compliment quoted above proves that he had then been busy with his pen. He mourned the loss of his poetical father in one of his best poems, thus commending Jonson's dramatic powers:

He is

But thou still puts true passion on; dost write With the same courage that tried captains fight; Giv'st the right blush and colour unto things; Low without creeping, high without loss of wings; Smooth yet not weak, and, by a thorough care, Big without swelling, without painting, fair. His three 'tragi-comedies,' The Royal Slave, The Lady-Errant, and The Siege, are rhetorical and artificial; his comedy, more comic than really humorous, is an imitation of Jonson's manner, and handles the Puritans roughly. The title of The Lady-Errant itself suggests a dream of the new woman, and still more the opening speech:

And if you see not women plead and judge,
Raise and depress, reward and punish, carry
Things how they please, and turn the politique door
Upon new hinges very shortly, never

Believe the oracle.

But the story resolves itself into a fantastic rebellion of the princesses and ladies of Cyprus when their lords are at the wars in Crete, to be carried out by lances, falchions, javelins and helmets, armour, and ordinary military methods, till the scheme is thwarted by the triumph of true love. In spite of the unanimous agreement of the ladies—

Our souls are male as theirs.

That we have hitherto forborn t' assume
And manage thrones, that hitherto we have not
Challenged a sovereignty in arts and arms,
And writ ourselves imperial, hath been
Men's tyranny and our modesty :

and in spite of eloquent adjurations—

Let us i' th' name of honour rise unto
The pitch of our creation-

they prove mere weak, loving women, and cheerfully return to subjection again.

'Lesbia's lament over her dead Sparrow, which picked crumbs, fed from its mistress's trencher or lip, and said "Philip," shows that Cartwright knew, or at least knew of, Skelton's Phylyp Sparowe

So Love appeared, when, breaking out his way
From the dark chaos, he first shed the day;
Newly awaked out of the bud, so shews
The half-seen, half-hid glory of the rose,
As you do through your veils; and I may swear,
Viewing you so, that beauty doth bide there.
So Truth lay under fables, that the eye
Might reverence the mystery, not descry;
Light being so proportioned, that no more
Was seen, but what might cause 'em to adore :
Thus is your dress so ordered, so contrived,
As 'tis but only poetry revived.

Such doubtful light had sacred groves, where rods
And twigs at last did shoot up into gods;
Where, then, a shade darkeneth the beauteous face,
May not I pay a reverence to the place?
So under water glimmering stars appear,
As those-but nearer stars-your eyes do here;
So deities darkened sit, that we may find
A better way to see them in our mind.
No bold Ixion, then, be here allowed,
Where Juno dares herself be in the cloud.
Methinks the first age comes again, and we
See a retrieval of simplicity.

Thus looks the country virgin, whose brown hue
Hoods her, and makes her shew even veiled as you.
Blest mean, that checks our hope, and spurs our fear,
Whiles all doth not lie hid, nor all appear!

O fear ye no assaults from bolder men ;
When they assail, be this your armour then.
A silken helmet may defend those parts
Where softer kisses are the only darts!

A Valediction.

Bid me not go where neither suns nor showers
Do make or cherish flowers;
Where discontented things in sadness lie,
And Nature grieves as I;
When I am parted from those eyes
From which my better day doth rise,
Though some propitious power
Should plant me in a bower,

Where, amongst happy lovers, I might see
How showers and sunbeams bring

One everlasting spring;

Nor would those fall, nor these shine forth to me.

Nature herself to him is lost,

Who loseth her he honours most.

Then, fairest, to my parting view display

Your graces all in one full day;

Whose blessed shapes I'll snatch and keep, till when

I do return and view again:

So by this art, fancy shall fortune cross,
And lovers live by thinking on their loss.

John Cleveland (1613–58), the cavalier poet, was equally conspicuous for political loyalty and poetical extravagance in conceits. His father was usher of a charity school at Loughborough, Leicestershire, and vicar from 1621 of Hinckley. After four years (1627-31) at Christ's College, Cambridge, Cleveland was elected a fellow of St John's, and lived nine years 'the delight and ornament of the society.' He strenuously opposed Cromwell's election for Cambridge to the Long Parliament, and was for his loyalty ejected from his fellowship in 1645. He betook himself to the king's army, and was appointed Judge-Advocate at Newark; he was deprived of that office in 1646, and next year vented his indignation at the surrender of the king in a fierce and famous satire on the Scots, part of which runs : A land where one may pray with cursed intent, O may they never suffer banishment !

Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang'd his doom; Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home.

Like Jews they spread and as infection fly,

As if the devil had ubiquity,

Hence 'tis they live as rovers and defie
This or that place, rags of geography,

They 'r citizens o' th' world, they 'r all in all,
Scotland's a nation epidemical.

...

And yet they ramble not to learn the mode
How to be drest, or how to lisp abroad; .
No, the Scots errant fight, and fight to eat,
Their ostrich-stomachs make their swords their meat;
Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt,
Who use to string their teeth upon their belt.
Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!
How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts !
They wanted food and rayment; so they took
Religion for their seamstress and their cook.
Unmask them well, their honours and estate,
As well as conscience, are sophisticate.
Shrive but their title and their moneys poize,
A laird and twenty pence pronounc'd with noise,
When constru'd but for a plain yeoman go,
And a good sober two pence, and well so.
Hence then you proud impostors, get you gone,
You Picts in gentry and devotion.

You scandal to the stock of verse, a race
Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace.
Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce
The ostracism, and sham'd it out of use.
The Indian that heaven did forswear,
Because he heard some Spaniards were there;
Had he but known what Scots in hell had been,
He would Erasmus-like have hung between.
My muse hath done. A voyder for the nonce,
I wrong the devil should I pick their bones;
That dish is his; for when the Scots decease
Hell like their nation, feeds on bernacles.
A Scot when from the gallow-tree got loose
Drops into Styx, and turns a Soland goose.

The voider was a servant who carried out the remains of a feast.

In 1655 Cleveland was seized at Norwich and put in prison. He petitioned the Protector, declaring his belief that, next to his adherence to the royal party, the cause of his confine

ment was the narrowness of his estate; for none stood committed whose estate could bail them. I am the only prisoner,' he says, 'who have no acres to be my hostage;' and he ingeniously argues that poverty, if it is a fault, is its own punishment. Cromwell released the poor poet, who died three years afterwards in London. Independently of his strong and biting satires, which were the cause of his popularity while living, Cleveland wrote some love verses containing genuine poetry, amidst a mass of affected metaphors and fancies. He carried this gallantry to an extent bordering on the ludicrous, making all nature-sun and shade-do homage to his mistress; as is well shown in these verses:

On Phillis Walking before Sun-rising in a Morning.
The sluggish morn as yet undrest,
My Phillis brake from out her eest,
As if she'd made a match to run
With Venus, usher to the sun.
The trees, like yeomen of the guard
(Serving more for pomp than ward)
Rank'd on each side with loyal duty,
Weav'd branches to inclose her beauty.
The plants, whose luxury was lopp'd,
Or age with crutches underpropp'd
(Whose wooden carkases are grown
To be but coffins of their own)
Revive, and at her general dole,
Each receives his ancient soul.
The winged choristers began
To chirp their matins; and the fan
Of whistling winds, like organs play'd
Unto their voluntaries made

The wakened earth in odors rise

To be her morning sacrifice.

The flowers, call'd out of their beds,
Start and raise up their drowsie heads,
And he that for their colour seeks,
May find it vaulting in her cheeks,
Where roses mix; no civil war
Divides her York and Lancaster.
The marygold (whose courtier's face
Echoes the sun, and doth unlace
Her at his rise, at his full stop
Packs and shuts up her gawdy shop)
Mistakes her cue, and doth display:
Thus Phillis antedates the day.

These miracles had cramp'd the sun,
Who, fearing that his kingdom's won,
Powders with light his frizled locks,
To see what saint his lustre mocks.
The trembling leaves through which he play'd,
Dappling the walk with light and shade,
Like lattice-windows, give the spye
Room but to peep with half an eye,
Lest her full orb his sight should dim,
And bid us all good-night in him :
Till she should spend a gentle ray,
To force us a new-fashion'd day.

But what new-fashioned palsie's this
Which makes the boughs divest their bliss;
And that they might her footsteps straw,
Drop their leaves with shivering awe?

Phillis perceiv'd, and (lest her stay
Should wed October unto May,
And as her beauty caus'd a spring,
Devotion might an autumn bring)
Withdrew her beams, yet made no night,
But left the sun her curate-light.

In an Elegy on the Archbishop of Canterbury (Laud), Cleveland has some vigorous lines:

How could success such vallainies applaud?
The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud.
The twins of public rage adjudg'd to dye
For treasons they should act by prophecy.
The facts were done before the laws were made,
The trump turn'd up after the game was play'd.
Be dull, great spirits, and forbear to climb,
For worth is sin, and eminence a crime.
No church-man can be innocent and high;

'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry. Richard Lovelace (1618-58), cavalier poet, was born at Woolwich, the eldest son of Sir William Lovelace, knight. He was educated at the Charterhouse and Oxford, and afterwards presented at court. Anthony Wood describes him at the age of sixteen as the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld; a person also of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but especially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex.' Thus personally distinguished, and a royalist in principle, Lovelace was chosen in 1642 by the county of Kent to deliver a petition to the House of Commons, praying that the king might be restored to his rights and the government settled. The Long Parliament was then in the ascendant, and Lovelace was thrown into prison for his boldness; in the Gatehouse at Westminster 'he wrote that celebrated song called "Stone Walls do not a Prison make."" He was liberated on £20,000 bail, was abroad 1646-48 in the French service, on his return to England was again imprisoned, and at his release towards the close of 1649 had 'consumed his whole patrimony in useless attempts to serve his sovereign.' To beguile his second captivity he collected his poems, and published them in 1649, under the title of Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. The general title was given them on account of the 'lady of his love,' whom Wood identifies with a Miss Lucy Sacheverell, by Lovelace called Lux Casta. This was an unfortunate attachment; for the lady, hearing that Lovelace had died of a wound at Dunkirk (1646), soon after married another suitor. Lovelace was now penniless, and the reputation of a broken cavalier was no passport to better circumstances. It appears that soon, oppressed with want and melancholy, gallant Lovelace fell into a consumption. Wood relates that he became 'very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places,' in one of

which, a miserable alley near Shoe Lane, he died in April 1658. Aubrey confirms Wood's statement as to the reverse of fortune. The poetry of Lovelace, like his life, was very unequal. There is a spirit and nobleness in the best of his verses that charm the reader, as his gallant bearing and fine person captivated the fair; but in general his poetry is affected, and at times obscure. His conceits were often grotesque and his workmanship extraordinarily careless. Lucasta’s fan, Lucasta's muff, the patch on her face, must needs be congratulated on being so near her sacred person; the waters at Tunbridge Wells are blessed because she is there drinking them. His taste was

perverted by the fashion of the day-the affected wit, ridiculous gallantry, and boasted licentiousness of the cavaliers. That Lovelace knew how to appreciate true taste and natural grace may be seen from his lines on Lely's portrait (1647) of Charles I. and the Duke of York:

See, what a clouded majesty, and eyes
Whose glory through their mist doth brighter rise
See, what an humble bravery doth shine,
And grief triumphant breaking through each line,
How it commands the face! So sweet a scorn
Never did happy misery adorn!

;

So sacred a contempt that others shew To this-o' the height of all the wheel-below; That mightiest monarchs by this shaded book May copy out their proudest, richest look. Byron was criticised nearly two centuries afterwards for saying in the Bride of Abydos:

The mind, the music breathing from her face; but he vindicated the expression on the broad ground of its truth and appositeness. Byron did

not know what was pointed out by Sir Egerton Brydges that Lovelace, in a song of Orpheus lamenting the death of his wife, wrote:

Oh, could you view the melody

Of every grace,

And music of her face,

You'd drop a tear;

Seeing more harmony In her bright eye

Than now you hear.

His two best-known songs-'To Lucasta' and 'To Althea'-are also by far the best things he did; but even in the first, as Mr Gosse has noted, he uses a figure of Habington's, and in the same words. Habington had in 1634, praising Castara, bestowed his veneration on the chaste nunnery of her breasts.'

Song.

Why should you swear I am forsworn,
Since thine I vowed to be?

Lady, it is already morn,

And 'twas last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility.

Have I not loved thee much and long,
A tedious twelve hours' space?
I must all other beauties wrong,

And rob thee of a new embrace,
Could I still dote upon thy face.

Not but all joy in thy brown hair
By others may be found;
But I must search the black and fair,
Like skilful mineralists that sound
For treasure in unploughed-up ground.
Then, if when I have loved my round,
Thou prov'st the pleasant she;
With spoils of meaner beauties crowned,
I laden will return to thee,
Even sated with variety.

The Rose.

Sweet, serene, sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower :
From thy long cloudy bed
Shoot forth thy damask head.
Vermilion ball that's given
From lip to lip in heaven;
Love's couch's coverlid;
Haste, haste to make her bed.

See rosy is her bower,
Her floor is all thy flower;

Her bed a rosy nest,

By a bed of roses prest.

Song.

Amarantha, sweet and fair,

Oh, braid no more that shining hair!

As my curious hand or eye
Hovering round thee let it fly.
Let it fly as unconfined

As its calm ravisher, the wind ;

Who hath left his darling, th' east,
To wanton o'er that spicy nest.
Every tress must be confest,
But neatly tangled at the best ;
Like a clue of golden thread
Most excellently ravelled.
Do not, then, wind up that light
In ribands, and o'ercloud in night,
Like the sun's in early ray;

But shake your head, and scatter day!

To Lucasta, on going to the Wars.
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore ;

I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.

To Althea, from Prison.
When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at my grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swifty round
With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep

Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my king;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free;

Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

A collection of Lovelace's Posthume Poems was published by

a brother in 1659; the best edition of his complete works is that by Mr W. C. Hazlitt (1864).