the "cruelty" of Waller's heroine.

The poet in one of his

"lonely walks distracted by despair," meets with Apollo, who advises him to retaliate on his mistress, but to no purpose:

In vain I try, in vain to vengeance move

My gentle Muse, so used to tender love.

Such magic rules my heart, whate'er I write

Turns all to soft complaint and amorous flight.

"Begone, fond thoughts, begone; be bold,” said I;
"Satire's thy theme"-In vain again I try.

So charming Myra to each sense appears,
My soul adores, my rage dissolves in tears.

And yet Apollo's advice was certainly good; for, by some of the verse that Granville has left behind him, it is plain that he might have succeeded in that familiar style which is "fittest for discourse and nearest prose." Not only do his prologues and epilogues deserve the praise that Johnson bestows upon them, but his satirical epigrams, coarse as they are in texture, have unmistakable vigour. The sketches of Macro and Cocles (meaning perhaps Sunderland, or Godolphin, and Marlborough) in the "Lines on an Ill-favoured Lord" are admirable :

That Macro's looks are good let no man doubt :
Which I, his friend and servant, thus make out.
In every line of his perfidious face

The secret malice of his heart we trace.
So fair the warning, and so plainly writ;
Let none condemn the light that shows a pit.
Cocles, whose face finds credit for his heart,
Who can escape so smooth a villain's art?
Adorned with every grace that can persuade,
Seeing we trust, though sure to be betrayed.
His looks are snares: but Macro's cry, Beware!
Believe not, though ten thousand oaths he swear.
If thou'rt deceived, observing well this rule,
Not Macro is the knave, but thou the fool.
In this one point he and his looks agree
As they betray their master-so did he.

We should not naturally associate the following malodorous epigram with "Granville the polite"; but it is thoroughly characteristic of the Caroline age, whose

manners inspired it; and for this reason, and as possessing a brutal pungency which it would be hard to match outside the epigrams of Martial, it deserves to be cited :

Believe me, Cloe, the perfumes that cost

Such sums to sweeten thee are treasures lost.

Not all Arabia would sufficient be:

Thou smell'st not of thy sweets; they stink of thee.

William Walsh, the partner of Granville in Pope's panegyrical couplet, was his opponent in politics. He was the son of Joseph Walsh of Abberley in Worcestershire, and was born in 1673. Entering Wadham College, Oxford, in 1678, he left it without taking a degree, and appears to have entered early into courtly society, where, according to Dennis, he was noted for the splendour of his dress. On the 10th of August 1698 he was elected M.P. for Worcestershire, and when he began to correspond with Pope in 1705, he represented Richmond in Yorkshire. He was Gentleman of the Horse under the Duke of Somerset. A zealous partisan of the Whigs, he supported the war policy initiated by William III., and in his Golden Age Restored satirised the leaders of the Tory reaction of 1703; among others Granville, whom he apparently expected to be elected Speaker of the House of Commons.1 On the other hand, when the Whigs recovered their ascendency, he imitated with some felicity (1705) Horace's Ode beginning Justum et tenacem :—

The man that's resolute and just,
Firm to his principles and trust,
Nor hopes nor fears can blind ;
No passions his designs control,
Not Love, that tyrant of the soul,
Can shake his steady mind.

No parties for revenge engaged,
Nor threatening of a Court enraged,
Nor storms where fleets despair;
No thunder pointed at his head;
The shattered world may strike him dead,
Not touch his soul with fear.

1 "Granville shall seize the long-expected chair.”

VOL. V

H

From this the Grecian glory rose ;
By this the Romans awed their foes;
Of this their poets sing;

These were the paths their heroes trod ;
These arts made Hercules a god,

And great Nassau a king.

In the rest of the ode he goes on to prophesy the rich harvests the country will reap from a steady opposition to Louis XIV. He died in March 1707-8.

Walsh attained much more

nearly than Granville to Dryden, in the Postscript

the idea of "simplicity" in style. to the Æneis, speaks of him as the best critic in the nation: hence Pope, who says that he owed to him the counsel to aim at "correctness," with his usual trenchant felicity of description, calls him "knowing Walsh." This epithet indeed Walsh scarcely deserved when he advised Pope to write a pastoral play in imitation of Tasso's Aminta. He was in fact blinded to the natural movement towards simplification of taste by his appreciation of late Italian poetry, just as Granville was misled by his admiration of Kings, and of Waller, their courtly flatterer. Walsh knew little of the world outside the Court, and would doubtless have taken for his motto Odi profanum vulgus still within the limited circle for which he wrote he aims at familiarity. The fastidiousness of his critical taste saved him from affectation. He had a natural turn for epigram; and though most of his poems are of the gallant character, which was supposed to be necessary for a man of fashion, he writes on love rather as a moralist than as a lover. Thus he gives an Envoi" to his Book in the spirit of an epigrammatist :

:

Go, little Book, and to the world impart,

The faithful image of an amorous heart.

Those who love's dear deluding pains have known

May in my fatal story read their own:

Those who have lived from all its torments free

May find the thing they never felt by me:
Perhaps, advised, avoid the gilded bait,
And, warned by my example, shun my fate;
While with calm joy, safe landed on the coast,
I view the waves on which I once was tost.

Love is a medley of endearments, jars,
Suspicions, quarrels, reconcilements, wars;
Then peace again. Oh! would it not be best
To chase the fatal poison from the breast?
But since so few can live from passion free,
Happy the man, and only happy he,
Who with such lucky stars begins his love,
That his cool judgment does his choice approve.
Ill-grounded passions quickly wear away;
What's built upon esteem can ne'er decay.

Walsh seems to have spoken from experience. Celinda, whom he celebrates, gave him, according to his own report, only a share of her heart, and he describes in his verse his fluctuations of feeling between his love for his mistress and his contempt for his rivals. In the following linesone of the early examples of anapæstic verse in English poetry-there is an anticipation of the light touch of Prior:

When I see the bright nymph whom my heart doth enthral,
When I view her soft eyes and her languishing air,

Her merit so great, my own merit so small,

It makes me adore, and it makes me despair.

But when I consider she squanders on fools

All those treasures of beauty with which she is stored,

My fancy it damps, my passion it cools,

And it makes me despise what before I adored.

Thus sometimes I despair, and sometimes I despise,
I love and I hate, but I never esteem:
The passion grows up when I view her bright eyes,
Which my rivals destroy when I look upon them!

How wisely doth Nature things different unite!

In such odd compositions our safety is found;
As the blood of a scorpion's a cure for the bite,

So her folly makes whole whom her beauty doth wound.

Walsh imitates the classics without slavishly copying them. He rejects the puerile mythology, which Granville adopts from Waller, and, in attempting to naturalise the classical form of the Eclogue, he sometimes infuses into it a certain amount of modern colour. Thus, in his fourth Pastoral Eclogue, he makes two shepherds contend with

UorM

each other in alternate verse about the contrasted dispositions of their respective mistresses, after which Lycon, the judge, decides in the following moral strain :—

Shepherds, enough; now cease your amorous war;

Or too much heat may carry both too far;

I well attended the dispute, and find

Both nymphs have charms, but each in different kind.
Flavia deserves more pains than she will cost,
As easily got, were she not easily lost.
Sylvia is much more difficult to gain,

But, once possessed, will well reward the pain.
We wish them Flavias all, when first we burn ;

But, once possessed, wish they would Sylvias turn.
And, by the different charms in each exprest,

One we should soonest love, the other best,

His most characteristic feature is epigrammatic neatness, a good example of which is furnished by a little poem called Phyllis's Resolution :—

When slaves their liberty require,

They hope no more to gain ;

But you not only that desire,

But ask the power to reign.

Think how unjust a suit you make,
Then you will soon decline;

Your freedom, when you please, pray take,
But trespass not on mine.

No more in vain, Alcander, crave ;

I ne'er will grant the thing,

That he, who once has been my slave,

Should ever be my king.

But he now and then shows a mastery over a light rhythmical form of comic verse, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in earlier English poetry. Such is his Despairing Lover :——

Distracted with care

For Phyllis the fair,

Since nothing could move her,

Poor Damon, her lover,

Resolves in despair

No longer to languish,

Nor bear so much anguish ;