THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., NEW YORK; THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED, TORONTO; THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON; THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA, TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI; THE COMMERCIAL PRESS, LIMITED, SHANGHAI. 821.2 2.93 Seventeenth-Century Lyrics EDITED WITH SHORT BIOGRAPHIES, BIBLIOG- By ALEXANDER CORBIN JUDSON PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN INDIANA UNIVERSITY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA COPYRIGHT 1927 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. COMPOSED AND nglish wahr 5994 Preface THIS anthology was prepared with the aim of giving adequate representation to the chief English lyrical poets of the seventeenth century. A number of minor poets usually represented in such a collection have been excluded entirely so that such outstanding men as Jonson, Herrick, Milton, and Dryden, not to mention such lesser figures as Herbert and Vaughan and Cowley, might be given their due. In this book attention has been centered upon what I believe to be the fourteen most important lyric poets of the century, and their work has been represented by two hundred and seventy-five poems. Whatever other merits the book may possess, this emphasis upon the more important men is, I feel, its raison d'être. Nor, I hasten to add, have I introduced a single poem merely to swell the total of any one man unless it measured up to what I thought to be a proper standard of quality. Indeed, an insistence upon intrinsic merit accounts for the relatively small number of poems by Lovelace, Suckling, and Rochester. In accordance with the conviction that a knowledge of the life and personality of the author is well-nigh essential to an understanding certainly to a rich appreciation-of a good deal of the lyric poetry of the seventeenth century, I have arranged the poems of each man, so far as possible, in chronological sequence, and have furnished a brief biography in which I have stressed the relation of the various poems to the poet's life. One of the chief charms of the seventeenth-century lyric is its genuinely personal note. Herbert, Vaughan, Herrick, and Milton often bare their hearts to us, and their poetry loses half its point without a knowledge of the struggles and the spiritual triumphs of which it became the almost inevitable expression. The short biographies, written with the specific aim of illuminating the poems included in this collection, will, I hope, not only increase the significance of the poetry for the average student but also spare the instructor the need of dwelling at length on biographical matters. My chief aim in the notes has been the clarifying of obscurities and the indicating of reasonably clear literary relationships. Many lyrics, to be sure notably the songs of Carew, Rochester, and Dryden-call for no elucidation whatever; on the other hand, much of the poetry of Jonson and Milton is for the average reader so full of obscure references that a great deal of its significance is lost, or may be gained only by a tedious consulting of dictionary and encyclopedia. Furthermore, the poets of this period are curiously indebted to one another and to earlier literature, many of them imitating and even paraphrasing with innocent and delightful irresponsibility. Jonson becomes much more intelligible when one is aware of his almost instinctive adaptation of the classics. Herrick, with his roseencircled brow and bevy of mistresses, is frequently puzzling unless one has some familiarity with his scurces of classical inspiration. Vaughan can best be appreciated only after one knows the interesting connection between his poems and those in George Herbert's little volume, The Temple. And John Donne-how definitely a knowledge of his beautiful and eccentric poems illuminates the work of men as far removed from him in spirit and time as Abraham Cowley. Seventeenth-century poetry constitutes an intricate web, the beauty and meaning of whose pattern become increasingly ap parent with the study of sources and relationships. Though I have attempted in both biographies and notes to assemble whatever matter would elucidate and contribute to the interest of the various selections, I have also left much to student and instructor. To begin with, I have made no effort to sketch the history of the lyric during the century. Vastly interesting spiritual changes occurred: as has often been remarked, men began the century as children, still possessing much of the buoyancy and glow of Elizabethan England; they ended it men and women, with the more sobered and thoughtful modern outlook. In no other hundred years has the English race undergone a more profound mental change. Any effort to interpret and trace the shifting attitude toward life, as also the artistic modifications in the form of the lyric, I have felt to be beyond the scope of this book. Likewise, I have made the criticism and interpretation of individual men wholly incidental. For those, however, who wish to give more exhaustive study to particular poets, I have furnished bibliographies, with some attempt at a comparative evaluation of the books and critical articles mentioned. I should perhaps state that, although I have striven to provide a dependable text, I have taken liberal privileges in modernizing it. It has seemed to me, for example, that more would be lost than gained by the retention of such forms as “heav'n,” “ent'ring,” and "th'," since modern readers experience no difficulty in making the necessary elisions. I have, however, resisted one temptation to which many compilers of anthologies yield—the printing of incomplete poems. In all but three instances poems are reproduced in full. Finally, I ought frankly to confess that I have included a number of short poems that are not lyrics according to a narrow interpretation-epigrams, descriptive pieces like "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," and even Suckling's "Ballad upon a Wedding," with its considerable narrative element. If any justification were needed, it could be found in the primary aim already expressed of revealing as adequately as practicable the poetic achievements and personalities of the fourteen poets represented. |