The noble poet vindicates the expression on the broad ground of its truth and appositeness. He does not seem to have been aware-as was appointed out by Sir Egerton Brydges-that Lovelace first employed the same illustration, in a song of Orpheus, lamenting the death of his wife: To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, True, a new mistress now I chase, To Althea, And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such I could not love thee, dear, so muc from Prison When, like committed linnets, I When I shall voice aloud how good Stone walls do not a prison make, JOHN CLEVELAND. JOHN CLEVELAND (1613-1658) was equally conspicuous for political loyalty and poetical conceit. His father was rector of a parish in Leicestershire. After completing his studies at Cambridge, the poet joined the royal army when the civil war broke out. He was the loudest and most strenuous poet of the cause, and distinguished himself by a fierce satire on the Scots in 1647. Two lines of this truculent party tirade present a conceit at which our countrymen may now smile: Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom; In 1655, the poet was seized at Norwich, and put in prison. He petitioned the Protector, stating that he was induced to believe that, next to his adherence to the royal party, the cause of his confinement was the narrowness of his estate, for none stood committed whose estate could bail them. I am the only prisoner,' he says, 'who have no acres to be my hostage;' and he ingeniously argues that poverty, if it is a fault, is its own punishment. Cromwell released the poor poet, who died three years afterwards in London. Independently of his strong and biting satires, which were the cause of his popularity when living, Cleveland wrote some love-verses containing genine poetry, amidst a mass of affected metaphors and fancies. He carried gallantry to an extent bordering on the ludicrous, making all nature-sun and shade-do homage to his mistress, In an Elegy On Phillis, Walking before Sunrise. To chirp their matins; and the fan The wakened earth in odours rise The flowers, called out of their beds, These miracles had cramped the sun, The trembling leaves through which he played, Like lattice-windows-give the spy Room but to peep with half an eye, But what new-fashioned palsy's this, Which makes the boughs divest their bliss? Phillis perceives, and-lest her stay Should wed October unto May, And as her beauty caused a spring, Devotion might an autumn bring Withdrew her beams, yet made no night, But left the sun her curate light. on the Archbishop of Canterbury' (Laud), Cleveland has some good lines. How could success such villainies applaud? The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud. The twins of public rage adjudged to die JOHN CHALKHILL. A pastoral romance, entitled Thealma and Clearchus,' was published by Izaak Walton, in 1683, with a title-page stating it to have been written long since by JOHN CHALKHILL, Esq., an acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser.' Walton tells us of the author, 'that he was in his time a man generally known, and as well beloved; for he was humble and obliging in his behaviour; a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent; and, indeed, his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous. "Thealma and Clearchus' was reprinted by Mr. Singer, who expressed an opinion that, as Walton had been silent upon the life of Chalkhill, he might be altogether a fictitious personage, and the poem be actually the composition of Walton himself. A critic in the 'Retrospective Review,' after investigating the circumstances, and comparing the Thealma' with the acknowledged productions of Walton, comes to the same conclusion. Sir John Hawkins, the editor of Walton, seeks to overturn the hypothesis of Singer, by the following statement: • Unfortunately, John Chalkhill's tomb of black marble is still to be seen on the walls of Winchester Cathedral, by which it appears he died in May 1679, at the age of eighty. Walton's preface speaks of him as dead in May 16:8; but as the book was not published till 1683, when Walton was ninety years old, it is probably an error of memory. The tomb in Winchester cannot be that of the author of Thealma,' unless Walton committed a further error in styling Chalkhill an acquaintance and friend of Spenser.' Spenser died in 1599, the very year in which John Chalkhill, interred in Winchester Cathedral, must have been born. We should be happy to think that the "Thealma' was the composition of Walton, thus adding another laurel to his venerable brow; but the internal evidence seems to us to be wholly against such a supposition. The poetry is of a cast far too high for the muse of Izaak, which dwelt only by the side of trouting streams and among quiet meadows. The nom de plume of Chalkhill must also have been an old one with Walton, if he wrote Thealma;' for, thirty years before its publication, he had inserted in his Complete Angler' two songs, signed 'Jo. Chalkhill.' The disguise is altogether very unlike Izaak Walton, then ninety years of age, and remarkable for his unassuming worth, probity and piety. We have no doubt, therefore, that Thealma' is a genuine poem of * Retrospective Revier, vol. iv. page 23). The article appears to have been written by: Sir Egerton Brydges, who contributed largely to that work. the days of Charles or James I. The scene of this pastoral is laid in Arcadia, and the author, like the ancient poets, describes the Golden Age and all its charms, which were succeeded by an Age of Iron, on the introduction of ambition, avarice, and tyranny. The plot is complicated and obscure, and the characters are deficient in individuality. It must be read, like the 'Faery Queen,' for its romantic descriptions, and its occasional felicity of language. The versification is that of the heroic couplet, varied, like Milton's 'Lycidas,' by breaks and pauses in the middle of the line. The Witch's Cave. Her cell was hewn out of the marble rock, By more than human art; she need not knock; At the world's birth, so star-like bright they shone. The ground was strewed with flowers, whose sweet scent, His credulous sense; the walls were gilt, and set To the quick'st eye they more than seemed to grow; Which was the fairest, which the handsomest decked, Or which of them desire would soon'st affect. After a low salute, they all 'gan sing, And circle in the stranger in a ring. Leaving her guest half won and wanton-eyed. He had forgot his herb: cunning delight Had so bewitched his ears, and bleared his sight, And captivated all his senses so. That he was not himself: nor did he know What place he was in, or how he came there, But greedily he feeds his eye and ear With what would ruin him. Next unto his view She represents a banquet, ushered in By such a shape as she was sure would win |