branch of the Legislature, because it appeals to the people against the arbitrary will of the dominant faction in a House of Commons which is approaching the term of its constitutional existence !

It may seem at first a more difficult and obscure matter to trace the Conservative movement, distinctive of the eighteenth century, in its literature; but I think that a little consideration will show it to be very visible in the work of Pope, whom I have chosen as the natural representative of the poetry of the period. If we go back to the poetry of Chaucer, we find very clearly shown in it the beginnings of two separate streams of inspiration, each of which may be traced in a distinct course through the history of our literature, the poetry of Romance and the poetry of Manners. The former had its source in the institutions of Chivalry and in Medieval Theology. It makes its first appearance in many of the Canterbury Tales,' and in poems like The Romance of the Rose' and

The Flower and the Leaf'; it runs strongly through our national ballad poetry; it attains a

large and noble flow in the 'Faery Queen,' and then, wasting itself among the refinements and gallantries of the seventeenth century, may be said to run underground till it reappears in a new and unexpected shape in the romantic outburst of the early part of the present century. The other poetical river has been fed by the life, action, and manners of the nation. After showing itself in full flow in the admirable Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,' it almost vanishes from sight for two centuries, when it is suddenly discovered again in the satires of Hall, and the comedies and historical plays of Shakespeare, being carried on through the series of noble historical portraits in 'Absalom and Achitophel,' through the moral satires of Pope, the didactic poems of Johnson and Goldsmith and the Tales of Crabbe-and in prose through the novels of Fielding, Smollett, Madame D'Arblay, and Miss Austen, as late as the generation that produced 'Vanity Fair.'

Now, if we trace the course of the romantic stream of our poetry, we shall find that it affords a very remarkable illustration of what has been

already said about the exhaustibility of poetical materials. In Chaucer and in our ballad poetry the volume of imagination is swift and strong; but in the poetry of succeeding generations the impulse is far feebler, and even in the 'Faery Queen' the reader feels, in spite of the genius of the poet, that as springs of social action, Medi ævalism and Feudalism are losing their force The poem is an allegory: of dramatic life and movement it is entirely devoid. When we come to the seventeenth century, the source of inspiration seems almost to have run dry. Here and there a genuine note of chivalry is heard in poetry, as in the noble lines of Lovelace :

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more;

or in the monarchical fancy of the gallant Mont

rose:

My dear, my only love, I pray
That little world of thee
Be governed by no other sway
Than purest Monarchy.
For if Confusion have a part,
Which virtuous souls abhor,
And call a synod in thy heart,-
I'll never love thee more.

The muse of Herrick, too, seizes with the felicity of real inspiration, and adorns with delightful fancy and humour, old Catholic customs still lingering in the country districts. But these are exceptions. No doubt the poets of the seventeenth century seem in many respects to be more gifted than those of the eighteenth. They try to get farther away from common life; they show a more curious invention, more ingenious flights of fancy. But they have one fatal defect take them as a whole, it is impossible to read them. Pope, with his usual piercing insight, passes just judgment on the seventeenthcentury style in the four verses in which he sums up the merits of Cowley, a really noble and elevated spirit:

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit.

Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art;

But still I love the language of his heart.

There is the truth of the matter. The poetry of the seventeenth century' wants heart.'1 Two

1 I am, of course, only speaking of poetry peculiar to the age in which it was written. The poetry of Shakespeare and Milton belongs, in the literal sense, to the seventeenth century,

1

thoroughly representative passages, showing the manner in which the distinguished poets of the period treated questions of love and religiontheir favourite topics-will illustrate what is The first is an extract from Cowley's Mistress,' and is called 'Counsel':

meant.

Gently, ah! gently, madam, touch

The wound which you yourself have made;
That pain must needs be very much
Which makes me of your hand afraid.

Cordials of pity give me now,

For I too weak for purgings grow.

Do but awhile with patience stay
(For counsel yet will de no good)
Till time, and rest, and Heaven allay
The violent burnings of my blood.
For what effect from this can flow,
To chide men drunk for being so?

Perhaps the physic's good you give,

But ne'er to me,can useful prove;
Med'cine may cure but not revive;

And I'm not sick, but dead in love.
In Love's Hell, not his world, am I,
At once I live, am dead, and die.

but the interest of each is universal; it is not the product of a particular fashion of thought.