In one of the songs in Cynthia’s Revels, we find, amidst some very pleasing imagery, the origin of a celebrated line in modern poetry—
‘Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, &c.’
This has not even the merit of originality, which is hard upon it. Ben Jonson had said two hundred years before,
‘Oh, I could still
(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill)
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is now a wither’d daffodil.’
His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morrison, has been much admired, but I cannot but think it one of his most fantastical and perverse performances.
I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to such stanzas as these.
—‘Of which we priests and poets say