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The following notes are taken, for the most part, from Anderson's Collection of British Poets, in thirteen volumes,-the same in the blank pages of which the rhymed sketches, published among the Poems, were originally written. The remarks on Pope are taken from one of the Author's numerous common-place books, and those on Burns from the margins of Allan Cunningham's edition in eight volumes.

NOTES ON BRITISH POETS.

DRAYTON.

"He wanted neither fire nor imagination, and possessed great command of his abilities. He has written no masques; his personifications of the passions are few; and that allegorical vein which the popularity of Spenser's works may fairly be supposed to have rendered fashionable, but seldom occurs in him."-HEADLEY, quoted in the Life of Drayton.

WHAT is the Polyolbion but an allegory? and as for personification, I should think the Passions were as capable of it as the Counties. Why it should have been a peculiar commendation to have written no masques, I cannot perceive. Would Milton have been greater had he not written Comus? Are not Ben Jonson's and Daniel's masques replete with lovely poetry? And does not the masque in general bear the same relationship to the Faery Queen as the Greek Tragedies to the Iliad and the Odyssey? Neither Mr. Headley nor Dr. Anderson seem to have been aware that Drayton was a dramatic writer, which it is evident from Collier's Annals of the Stage that he was. Besides the Merry Devil of Edmonton,

which Charles Lamb would fain believe his, he is entered in Henslowe's Diary as the author of two plays, neither of which have been discovered; Mother Redcap, in which he assisted Antony Munday, 1577, acted by the Lord Admiral's servants; and William Longsword, regarding which there is the following entry "I received forty shillings of Mr. Philip Hinslowe in part of 31. for the playe of Willm. Longsword, to be delivd psent wth 2 or three dayes: the xxth of feverary 1598. Michael Drayton." His signature is a vile scrawl. Drayton was also concerned with Chettle in the famous Wars of Henry I. and the Prince of Wales, and with Antony Munday, Wentworth, Smith, and Henry Chettle, in the History of Cardinal Wolsey. It is difficult to conceive how four authors contrived to unite in composing one play. Perhaps they were not all engaged at the same time, but in successive alterations or reformations.

CAREW.

"Tom Carew was neat, but he had a fault

That would not well stand with a laureat ;

His muse was hide-bound, and the issue of 's brain
Was seldom brought forth, but with trouble and pain."
SUCKLING, quoted in the Life of Carew.

Ir the laureates of either Charles' days had no more to perform than their successors since the Revolution, the most hide-bound muse might have managed the brace of odes. But in the days of "Masque and antique

pageantry" the laureate's office was no sinecure; and as he might often be called upon to produce at short notice, slowness of composition was a real disqualification for the place. Headley's criticism is sad nonsense. Carew, as an amatory poet, is no way to be compared to Habington or Lovelace, to say nothing of the exquisite love-scenes in the dramatic writers. He has none of that tenderness, sometimes, it is true, approaching to silliness, that makes the old madrigals so charming; nor can he compare with Waller in gallantry of compliment. Then what is meant by "the ease without the pedantry of Waller?” Ease and pedantry are mere antipathies; and as for conceit, he has as much as his wit could supply. But he certainly writes like a gentleman, not as a gentleman would now write for ladies' perusal, but as ladies were well content to be addressed in his age; and like most gentlemen writers who do not affect the à-la-mode slang, he writes a language which has never become obsolete. Hence his diction has a very modern appearance. His versification is easy and regular, sometimes vigorous, particularly his blank verse in the masque. Some of his more serious pieces, as the lines on Dr. Donne, and his addresses to Jonson and Davenant, display powers of mind much above his anacreontics.

TO T. H., A LADY RESEMBLING MY MISTRESS.

"Fair copy of my Celia's face," &c.

This is really a witty piece of sophistry. Carew and his contemporaries would have made excellent album contributors or annualists. They had a conceit for every possible contingency. A painted flower, a rice-paper butterfly, the day of the month, the lady's name, would have been quite sufficient to wind up the clock-work of their wits to strange complexities of motion. They differ from modern metrical triflers in this, that the curious machinery of their brains did actually move. The moderns cannot be accused of throwing thought away: even in Moore it is often too obvious that the occasion was devised for the conceit or the simile, and then one pretty thing follows another, with little or no connection; whereas in Carew, Waller, Cowley, &c., the notches of the wheels are fitted with a watch-maker's nicety. As it has been said that there is a logic of passion, a logic of imagination, a logic of wit, so these industrious idlers have proved that there is a logic of nonsense. Their quaint fancies, like saturated solution of alum dropped upon glass, are regularly crystallised. Their minds were like kaleidoscopes, and formed an endless diversity of figures out of a few glittering fragments of thought. They are perfectly distinct from the impassioned concetti of Petrarch and his followers, and from the fancies of Shakspeare and Crashaw, which rather resemble the fantastic imagery of cloud-land. But am I not awkwardly imitating the style I would define?

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