A History of English Literature

Donne ‘affects the metaphysics’ in his love poems, perplexing ‘the fair sex’ with ‘nice
speculations of philosophy’. As ‘affects’ suggests, these metaphysics are not offered
seriously. Johnson objected to the relentless ingenuity of Donne’s comparisons,
citing ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’, which compares parted lovers to a pair
of compasses. Sincerity, said Johnson, would express itself more simply.
In his ‘Elegy’ for Donne, Thomas Carew wrote ‘Here lies a king, that ruled as he
thought fit / The universal monarchy of wit.’ Donne had subjects, Jonson disciples.
Later poets learned from both, but none had Donne’s wit or impropriety. Henry
King wrote in his ‘Exequy’ to his dead wife:

But hark! My pulse, like a soft drum
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And, slow howe’re my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
King, Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan have the paradoxes of their Christian
perspectives; the work of Carew and the Cavalier poets (see below) is smarter and
blander; they did not have to try as hard as Donne or Jonson. The English poetry of
Charles I’s reign is mature. With all the skill of the previous generation, it has more
warmth, flexibility and joy, without loss of penetration or of the tragic sense. The
sureness of Herbert and Marvell is found in minor writers, such as Robert Herrick,
Thomas Carew or Edmund Waller, who are not eclipsed by their greater contempo-
raries. Few poets of any age have as many good lyrics as Herrick in his Hesperides.
A history cannot overlook poems such as Carew’s ‘Ask me no more where Jove
bestows / When June is past, the fading rose’ or Waller’s ‘Go Lovely Rose’: ‘Go,
lovely Rose, / Tell her that wastes her time and me, / That now she knows, /
When I resemble her to thee,e seems to be.’ It ends:

Then die, that she

The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee:

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

‘The common fate of all things rare’ is perfect without effort. In quality and quan-
tity, the minor poetry of the 17th century is unequalled. So general a quality comes
from the life of the time.

Devotional poets

Between the crises which began James’s reign and ended his son’s,George Herbert
(1593–1633) wrote devotional verse. The accomplished Herbert, a younger son of a
gifted family, not finding a career, became a village parson. The poems of this coun-
try priest have made him an unofficial saint of Anglicanism. His Life– told with
piety and charm by Izaak Walton, author ofThe Compleat Angler –describes an ideal
rather more gentlemanly than Chaucer’s pilgrim Parson.
Herbert’s poems are homely in imagery and simple in language, and often about
the church; his volume is called The Temple. These prayer-poems differ from similar
poems by Donne, Marvell, Crashaw, Vaughan or Traherne, being personally
addressed to God in an intimate tone. Christ was for Herbert a human person to
whom one speaks, and who may reply. This medieval intimacy became rare after
Herbert; for Milton, God ‘hath no need / Of man’s works or his own gifts’ (‘On his

THE STUART CENTURY 151

Caroline and Cavalier

poets

Aurelian Townshend

(c.1583–c.1651)

Henry Drummond of

Hawthornden (1585–1649)

Lady Mary Wroth (1586–1652)

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Thomas Randolph

(1605–1635)

Edmund Waller (1606–1687)

Sir John Suckling (1609–1642)

Sir John Denham

(1615–1669)

Sir Richard Lovelace

(1618–1658)

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess

of Newcastle (1623–1673)

Katherine Philips (1631–1664)

Caroline Of the reign of

Charles I (Lat. Carolus),

1625–42 (executed 1649).