the cavaliers; a spot where Lovelace and Montrose might each have fought and each have sung, defending it to the last loaf of bread and the last charge of powder, and yielding only to the irresistible force of Cromwell's cannonade. Much interest is imparted to the lays of these cavalier poets, when we consider the circumstances under which they were written. They were no carpet knights, pouring forth effusions of chivalrous loyalty in the security of a Court, or to amuse the leisure of a mild and temporary captivity; but for that very loyalty which they boasted so loudly, Montrose lay under sentence of death, and Richard Lovelace was pining in the crowded and loathsome prison called the Gatehouse at Westminster. Perhaps the fate of the great Marquis was the happier of the two. He fell with the fame and consolations of a martyr, as his master had fallen before him; whilst his brother poet was indeed released by the ascendant party after the death of the King, when the royalists were so scattered and broken as to be no longer formidable; but when at last set free he was penniless; the lady of his love (Lucy Sacheverel), hearing that he had died of his wounds at Dunkirk, was married to another person; and oppressed with want and misery he fell into a consumption. Wood relates that "he became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes, and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places," in one of which, situated in some alley near Shoe Lane, he died in 1658. What a reverse for one whose gallant bearing and splendid person seem to have corresponded so entirely with the noble and chival rous spirit of his poetry! Faults and virtues, Richard Lovelace as a man and as a writer, may be taken as an impersonation of the cavalier of the civil wars, with much to charm the reader, and still more to captivate the fair. TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON. When love, with unconfinèd wings, To whisper at my grates; And fetter'd with her eye, When flowing cups run swiftly round, With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses crown'd When healths and draughts go free, Fishes that tipple in the deep, When linnet-like confinèd, I With shriller note shall sing He is, how great should be, The enlarged winds that curl the flood Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love, TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS. Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, True, a new mistress now I choose, And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such As you, too, shall adore: I could not love thee, dear, so much, ON LELY'S PORTRAIT OF CHARLES THE FIRST. See what an humble bravery doth shine, And grief triumphant breaking through each line, So sacred a contempt that others show To this (o' the height of all the wheel) below; An elegant and accurate critic, Sir Egerton Brydges, has pointed out a singular coincidence between an illustration employed by Lovelace and a line for which Lord Byron has been, as it seems to me, unjustly censured in the "Bride of Abydos." The noble poet says of his heroine "The mind, the music breathing from her face;" and he vindicated the expression on the obvious ground of its clearness and truth. Lovelace, in a Song of Orpheus, lamenting the death of his wife, uses the same words in nearly the same sense. Lord Byron had probably never seen the poem, or, if he had, the illustration had perhaps remained in his mind to be unconsciously reproduced by that strange process of amalgamation which so often combines memory with invention. These are the lines sung by Orpheus, who works out the idea too far Oh, could you view the melody, Of every grace, And music of her face, You'd drop a tear, Seeing more harmony In her bright eye Than now you hear. The poem of "Loyalty confined" is supposed to have been written by Sir Roger L'Estrange, while imprisoned on account of his adherence to Charles the First. On a first reading, these terse and vigorous stanzas seem too much like a paraphrase of Lovelace's fine address "To Althea from Prison;" but there is so much that is original, both in thought and expression, that we cannot but admit that the apparent imitation is the result of similarity of sentiment in a similar situation. These imprisoned cavaliers think and feel alike, and must needs speak the same language : Beat on, proud billows. Boreas, blow; Swell-curled waves, high as Jove's roof; Your incivility doth show That innocence is tempest-proof; Though truly heroes frown, my thoughts are calm; That which the world miscalls a jail, A private closet is to me; Whilst a good conscience is my bail, I, whilst I wish'd to be retir'd, Into this private room was turn'd, As if their wisdoms had conspired The Salamander should be burn'd; Or like those sophists, that would drown a fish, Even constrain'd to suffer what I wish. The cynic loves his poverty, The pelican her wilderness, And 'tis the Indian's pride to be Stoics we see Naked on frozen Caucasus: These manacles upon my arm I, as my mistress' favours, wear; I have some iron shackles there; I'm in the cabinet lock'd up Like some high-priced marguerite; And thus, proud Sultan, I'm as great as thee. Here sin, for want of food, must starve |