‘Mongst all the palaces in hell’s command,
No one so merciless as this of hers,
The adamantine doors forever stand
Impenetrable, both to prayers and tears.
The wall’s inexorable steel, no hand
Of time, or teeth of hungry ruin fears.’
On the whole, this poem, though Milton has undoubtedly availed himself of many ideas and passages in it, raises instead of lowering our conception of him, by shewing how much more he added to it than he has taken from it.
Crashaw’s translation of Strada’s description of the Contention between a nightingale and a musician, is elaborate and spirited, but not equal to Ford’s version of the same story in his Lover’s Melancholy. One line may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, and of Crashaw’s style in general.
‘And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.’
Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste. As Mr. Burke said, ‘he could not love the French Republic’—so I may say, that I cannot love the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, with all my good-will to it. It will not do for me, however, to imitate the summary petulance of the epigrammatist.