There is not much to be said about his poetry. It may be compared to his person—beautiful, but dressed in a stiff mode. We do not, in every point, homologate the opinions of Prynne, as to the 'unloveliness of love-locks;' but we do certainly look with a mixture of contempt and pity on the self-imposed trammels of affectation in style and manner which bound many of the poets of that period. The wits of Charles II. were more disgustingly licentious; but their very carelessness saved them from the conceits of their predecessors; and, while lowering the tone of morality, they raised unwittingly the standard of taste. Some of the songs of Lovelace, however, such as 'To Althea, from Prison,' are exquisitely simple, as well as pure. Sir Egerton Brydges has found out that Byron, in one of his be-praised paradoxical beauties, either copied, or coincided with, our poet. In the 'Bride of Abydos' he says of Zuleika—
'The mind, the music breathing from her face.'
Lovelace had, long before, in the song of 'Orpheus Mourning for his
Wife,' employed the words—
'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.'
While many have praised, others have called this idea nonsense; although, if we are permitted to speak of the harmony of the tones of a cloud, why not of the harmony produced by the consenting lines of a countenance, where every grace melts into another, and the various features and expressions fluctuate into a fine whole? Whatever, whether it be the beauty of the human face, or the quiet lustre of statuary, or the mild glory of moonlight, gives the effects of music, and, like that divine art,
'Pours on mortals a beautiful disdain,'
may surely become music's metaphor and poetic analogy.
SONG.
TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON.
1 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 fetter'd to her eye,
The birds, that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.