(d) His Position in Literature. In literature Milton occupies an important central or transitional position. He came immediately after the Elizabethan epoch, when the Elizabethan methods were crumbling into chaos. His hand and temper were firm enough to gather into one system the wavering tendencies of poetry, and to give them sureness, accuracy, and variety. The next generation, lacking the inspiration of the Elizabethans, found in him the necessary stimulus to order and accuracy; and from him, to a great extent, sprang the new “classicism” that was to be the rule for more than a century.
OTHER POETS
1. Abraham Cowley (1618–67) was born in London, the son of a wealthy citizen. He was educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar. In the Civil War he warmly supported the King; followed the royal family into exile, where he performed valuable services; returned to England at the Restoration; and for the remainder of his life composed books in retirement.
Cowley, even more than Pope and Macaulay, is the great example of the infant prodigy. When he was ten he wrote a long epical romance, Piramus and Thisbe (1628), and two years later produced an even longer poem called Constantia and Philetus (1630). All through his life he was active in the production of many kinds of work—poems, plays, essays, and histories. His best-known poem was The Davideis (1637), a rather dreary epic on King David, in heroic couplets. Other poems were The Mistress (1647), a collection of love-poems, and the Pindarique Odes, which are a curious hybrid between the early freedom of the Elizabethans and the classicism of the later generation. His prose works included his Essays and Discourse concerning Oliver Cromwell (1661).
Both in prose and poetry Cowley was a man of various methods, showing the wavering moods of the transitional poet. His heroic couplets and irregular odes foreshadow the vogue of the approaching “correctness”; his essays, in their pleasant egoism and miscellaneous subject-matter, suggest Addison; and his prose style, plain and not inelegant, draws near to the mode of Dryden. His variety pleased many tastes; hence the popularity that was showered upon him during his day. But he excelled in no particular method; and hence the partial oblivion that has followed.
2. The Metaphysical Poets. The works of this group of poets have several features in common: (i) the poetry is to a great extent lyrical; (ii) in subject it is chiefly religious or amatory; (iii) there is much metrical facility, even in complicated lyrical stanzas; (iv) the poetic style is sometimes almost startling in its sudden beauty of phrase and melody of diction, but there are unexpected turns of language and figures of speech (hence the name of the group).
(a) Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was born in London, and educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, where he lived for fourteen years. He was appointed to a living in Devonshire, where he died.
His two volumes of poems are Noble Numbers (1647) and Hesperides (1648). Both are collections of short poems, sacred and profane. In them he reveals lyrical power of a high order; fresh, passionate, and felicitously exact, but at the same time meditative and observant. Herrick was strongly influenced by Jonson and the classics; he delighted in the good things of this world; but that did not prevent his having a keen enjoyment of nature and a fresh outlook upon life. Among the best known of his shorter pieces are To Anthea, To Julia, and Cherry Ripe.
(b) George Herbert (1593–1633) was born at Montgomery Castle, educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was appointed Fellow and reader, took holy orders, and was given in turn livings near Huntingdon and at Bemerton, near Salisbury.
None of his poems was published during his lifetime. On his death-bed he gave to a friend the manuscript of The Temple, a collection of religious poems in various meters. The poems, of a high quality, are inspired with a devout piety which is often fantastically expressed and quaintly figured. His poetry is not so “metaphysical” as that of some others of his group; but neither does it rise to the great heights that they sometimes achieve.