40 You first are rook'd out of those darts, That gave yourselves the wound. 20 Whilst weighty Something modestly abstains French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy, Spaniards' dispatch, Danes' wit, are mainly seen in thee. The great man's gratitude to his best friend, John Wilmot, son of Henry, Earl of Rochester, was born in 1647; went, when only twelve years old, to Wadham College; and in 1661 was, at the age of fourteen, made Master of Arts with some other persons of rank. He distinguished himself at the Court of Charles II. for wit and profligacy, and died at the age of thirty-four. Yet Rochester gave time also to study. That it became a gentleman to be a wit and a patron of wits, to read and judge intellectual work, and even to write himself, was an opinion with which the Court of Charles II. must be distinctly credited. The king himself was shrewd in repartee, and relished wit even in an opponent. He would have liked to win to his side Andrew Marvell, whose earnest mind was fighting the frivolous with their own weapon of light raillery. Denham lived until 1668, and Waller nearly twenty years beyond that date, enjoying supreme praise from younger writers. Sir George Etherege, whose three comedies reflect with painful fidelity the degeneracy of Court life in the time of Charles II., celebrated the introduction of a taste for gambling at cards among fashionable women with this SONG OF BASSET.1 Let equipage and dress despair, Since basset is come in; For nothing can oblige the fair Like money and morine. Basset. Gambling with cards rose high in France under Louis XIV. Cardinal Mazarin, who played deep, introduced from Italy a game in 1643, when her age was about twenty, one of the maids of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria. She had strong inclination towards literature, and this added to her charms in the eyes of William Cavendish, then Marquis, afterwards Duke of Newcastle, a foremost friend of the king's. Under Cavendish, her father, Sir Charles Lucas, served in command of the cavalry, when Sir Charles, on the arrival of Prince Rupert, joined in the movement that secured the relief of York from siege. But in July followed the battle of Marston Moor; and the Marquis of Newcastle, who had been owner of vast estates, with the young Margaret, whom he had made his second wife, once had to pawn their clothes for a dinner. After the Restoration, the Marquis became Duke of Newcastle, and his wife, as Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, wrote indefatigably. Her books were all the children she had a little family of ten folios. She was an excellent wife, and a kind friend; though she kept young ladies about her who might be called up in the night to commit to paper any ideas that crossed her brain. The duke survived his duchess some three years; and as his age was eighty-one when she died -early in 1674, aged about fifty-it must, in their latter days, have been a blessing to him when she slept soundly, and called nobody up to address her night thoughts to posterity. Her most interesting work was the life of her husband, published in 1667. Her "Poems and Phancies" affect, firstly, in a comical way high natural philosophy; secondly, to be ethical; and thirdly, fourthly, and fifthly, poetical Fancies of Nature and Love, of Fairies, War, and Mournfulness. The samples here given of her strained ingenuity were written under the Commonwealth, when the reaction against it was yet to be felt in England; but to this MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE. From her "Poems and Phancies" (1664). her taste was fashioned, and by this it abided. She was too well satisfied with that image of herself engraved before the edition of her "Poems and Phancies," published in 1664, which shrined her in a niche with Apollo and Minerva right and left, gazing up at her in respectful admiration. Yet she was really clever, though if she called up any one in the night to receive the inspiration of this poem of Nature's Wheel, we may suppose that she began with lively energy, and was dropping to sleep again by the time she reached the "shirts of judgment." NATURE'S WHEEL. The Tongue's a wheel to spin words from the mind, A POSSET FOR NATURE'S BREAKFAST. A handful of chaste thoughts, double refined, Other women wrote verse in the reign of Charles II. There was merit in Anne Killigrew, genius and generosity of mind in Aphra Behn. Though, writing for the Court, she did abase her pen to bring her wit into fashion, let it not be forgotten that from her womanly heart came, in her novel of "Oroonoko," the first protest in our literature against negro slavery. This is a song by Mrs. Behn: ments of Court life. Friendship was her chief theme; and she had Jeremy Taylor for a friend. Her life was short, for she died of small-pox four years after the Restoration at the age of thirty-one. Following the fashion of the Précieuses, she called herself, and was called, Orinda. Her verse and her life were praised in the strains of Cowley and Roscommon. Here is her picture of maidenly life:- Perhaps the next piece was her last, for she soon lay beside her little one again, after a life as innocent. Her heart spoke in this poem upon DEATH. How weak a star doth rule mankind, Which owes its ruin to the same Causes which Nature had design'd To cherish and preserve the frame! As Commonwealths may be secure And no remote invasion dread, Yet may a sadder fall endure From traitors in their bosom bred: THE VIRGIN. The things that make a virgin please, She that seeks will find them these: A beauty, not to Art in debt, Rather agreeable than great; The beams of kindness and of wit; 10 ON HIS MISTRESS DROWNED. Sweet stream, that dost with equal pace Both thyself fly, and thyself chase, Forbear awhile to flow, And listen to my woe. Then go, and tell the sea that all its brine Is fresh, compar'd to mine; Inform it that the gentler dame, Who was the life of all my flame, In th' glory of her bud Has pass'd the fatal flood, Death by this only stroke triumphs above The greatest power of love : Alas, alas! I must give o'er, My sighs will let me add no more. Go on, sweet stream, and henceforth rest No more than does my troubled breast; And if my sad complaints have made thee stay. These tears, these tears shall mend thy way. 10 Thomas Flatman, born in London about 1633, was educated for the bar, entered the Inner Temple, turned to poetry and painting, and published, in 1661, "Don Juan Lamberto; or, A Comic History of These Last Times," a satire upon Richard Cromwell, which was reprinted in the same year with a second part. Flatman succeeded as a miniature painter, and won some reputation among the poets of the Restoration. When he married in 1672, he was serenaded with this song of his own :— 1 A Tory in a bog. The bogs of Ireland yielded refuge to Popish outlaws, who were called Tories as being hunted men, from a Gaelic word "toir," pursuit, diligent search. Bands of thieves-also hunted men-found likewise safe retreat in the Irish bogs, and the word Tory began to be applied contemptuously about 1680 to the party that maintained royal absolutism, and was accused of a tendency to make Roman Catholicism dominant in England. Out of the same spirit of irreligious hatred arose at the same time the name of Whig for those who opposed claims of absolute authority in Church and State. Whig was originally a name of contempt given by Episcopalians to Presbyterian Dissenters-a scoff at the sourness of the Precisian--Whig being the acid liquor out of cream that has turned sour. The word is allied to whey. When churned milk begins to throw off whey it is said to "whig." Not only John Milton, but John Bunyan and many another earnest man of lower genius uttered the deeper thoughts of England when a corrupt Court was doing its worst as an example to the people. The genius of Bunyan will be illustrated in another volume; but here let us blend one note from him with the music of his time, by taking a piece or two from a little rhymed book of his called "Divine Emblems, or Temporal Things Spiritualized, Fitted for the Use of Boys and Girls :' UPON APPAREL. God gave us clothes to hide our nakedness, And we by them do it expose to view; Our pride and unclean minds, to an excess, By our apparel we to others shew. ON THE MOLE IN THE GROUND. The mole's a creature very smooth and slick, She digs i' th' dirt, but 'twill not on her stick. So's he who counts this world his greatest gains, Yet nothing gets but labour for his pains. Earth's the mole's element, she can't abide To be above ground, dirt-heaps are her pride; And he is like her, who the worldling plays, He imitates her in her works and ways. Poor silly mole, that thou shouldst love to be Where thou nor sun, nor moon, nor stars canst see. But oh! how silly 's he who doth not care, So he gets earth, to have of heaven a share! Let me add also from John Bunyan's book for children this little paraphrase UPON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Our Father which in heaven art, Thy name be always hallowéd;2 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done; Thy heavenly path be followed 10 2 Hallowed, pronounced, as it used sometimes to be written, "hollowed." So the adjective form "halig" is now always written "holy." |