I am amused with the manner in which Quarles and his contemporary poets speak of Nature,—with a sort of gallantry, as a knight of his lady,—not as lovers, but as having a thorough respect for her and some title to her acquaintance. They speak manfully, and their lips are not closed by affection.
"The pale-faced lady of the black-eyed night."
Nature seems to have held her court then, and all authors were her gentlemen and esquires and had ready an abundance of courtly expressions.
Quarles is never weak or shallow, though coarse and untasteful. He presses able-bodied and strong-backed words into his service, which have a certain rustic fragrance and force, as if now first devoted to literature after having served sincere and stern uses. He has the pronunciation of a poet though he stutters. He certainly speaks the English tongue with a right manly accent. To be sure his poems have the[498] musty odor of a confessional.
How little curious is man,
Who hath not searched his mystery a span,
But dreams of mines of treasure
Which he neglects to measure,
For threescore years and ten
Walks to and fro amid his fellow men