[498] Lord Stirling is rather monotonous, as sonnetteers usually are, and he addresses his mistress by the appellation, “Fair tygress.” Campbell observes that there is elegance of expression in a few of Stirling’s shorter pieces. Vol. iv., p. 206. The longest poem of Stirling is entitled Domesday, in twelve books, or, as he calls them, hours. It is written in the Italian octave stanza, and has somewhat of the condensed style of the philosophical school, which he seems to have imitated, but his numbers are harsh.
[499] The legitimate sonnet consists of two quatrains and two tercets; as much skill, to say the least, is required for the management of the latter as of the former. The rhymes of the last six lines are capable of many arrangements; but by far the worst, and also the least common in Italy, is that we usually adopt, the fifth and sixth rhyming together, frequently after a full pause, so that the sonnet ends with the point of an epigram. The best form, as the Italians hold, is the rhyming together of the three uneven, and the three even lines; but as our language is less rich in consonant terminations, there can be no objection to what has abundant precedents even in theirs, the rhyming of the first and fourth, second and fifth, third and sixth lines. This, with a break in the sense at the third line, will make a real sonnet, which Shakspeare, Milton, Bowles, and Wordsworth have often failed to give us, even where they have given us something good instead.
Carew. 52. Carew is the most celebrated among the lighter poets, though no collection has hitherto embraced his entire writings. Headley has said, and Ellis echoes the praise, that “Carew has the ease without the pedantry of Waller, and perhaps less conceit. Waller is too exclusively considered as the first man who brought versification to anything like its present standard. Carew’s pretensions to the same merit are seldom sufficiently either considered or allowed.” Yet, in point of versification, others of the same age seem to have surpassed Carew, whose lines are often very harmonious, but not so artfully constructed or so uniformly pleasing as those of Waller. He is remarkably unequal; the best of his little poems (none of more than thirty lines are good), excel all of his time; but, after a few lines of great beauty, we often come to some ill-expressed or obscure, or weak, or inharmonious passage. Few will hesitate to acknowledge that he has more fancy and more tenderness than Waller, but less choice, less judgment and knowledge where to stop, less of the equability which never offends, less attention to the unity and thread of his little pieces. I should hesitate to give him, on the whole, the preference as a poet, taking collectively the attributes of that character; for we must not, in such a comparison, overlook a good deal of very inferior merit which may be found in the short volume of Carew’s poems. The best has great beauty, but he has had, in late criticism, his full share of applause. Two of his most pleasing little poems appear also among those of Herrick; and as Carew’s were, I believe, published posthumously, I am rather inclined to prefer the claim of the other poet, independently of some internal evidence as to one of them. In all ages, these very short compositions circulate, for a time, in polished society, while mistakes as to the real author are natural.[500]
[500] One of these poems begins, “Amongst the myrtles as I walked, Love and my sighs thus intertalked.” Herrick wants four good lines which are in Carew; and as they are rather more likely to have been interpolated than left out, this leads to a sort of inference that he was the original; there are also some other petty improvements. The second poem is that beginning, “Ask me why I send you here, This firstling of the infant year.” Herrick gives the second line strangely, “This sweet infanta of the year,” which is little else than nonsense; and all the other variances are for the worse. I must leave it in doubt, whether he borrowed, and disfigured a little, or was himself improved upon. I must own that he has a trick of spoiling what he takes. Suckling has an incomparable image, on a lady dancing.
Her feet beneath the petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light—.
Herrick has it thus:—
Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep
A little out.
A most singular parallel for an elegant dancer.
Ben Jonson. 53. The minor poetry of Ben Jonson is extremely beautiful. This is partly mixed with his masques and interludes, poetical and musical rather than dramatic pieces, and intended to gratify the imagination by the charms of song, as well as by the varied scenes that were brought before the eye; partly in very short effusions of a single sentiment, among which two epitaphs are known by heart. Jonson possessed an admirable taste and feeling in poetry, which his dramas, except the Sad Shepherd, do not entirely lead us to value highly enough; and when we consider how many other intellectual excellencies distinguished him, wit, observation, judgment, memory, learning, we must acknowledge that the inscription on his tomb, O rare Ben Jonson! is not more pithy than it is true.
Wither. 54. George Wither, by siding with the less poetical, though more prosperous party in the civil war, and by a profusion of temporary writings to serve the ends of faction and folly, has left a name which we were accustomed to despise, till Ellis did justice to “that playful fancy, pure taste, and artless delicacy of sentiment which distinguish the poetry of his early youth.” His best poems were published in 1622 with the title “Mistress of Philarete.” Some of them are highly beautiful, and bespeak a mind above the grovelling puritanism into which he afterwards fell. I think there is hardly anything in our lyric poetry of this period equal to Wither’s lines on his Muse, published by Ellis.[501]