Francis Quarles (1592-1644) wrote more like a divine or contemplative recluse than a busy man of the world who held various public posts. Born at the manor-house of Stewards, Romford, he took his B.A. in 1608 from Christ's College, Cambridge, and then entered Lincoln's Inn. He was cup-bearer at Heidelberg to Elizabeth of Bohemia 1613-19, secretary to Archbishop Ussher 1629-33, and chronologer from 1639 to the city of London. He espoused the cause of Charles I., and was so harassed by the Roundhead party, who injured his property and plundered him of his books and rare manuscripts, that his death was attributed to the affliction and ill-health caused

FRANCIS QUARLES.

From the Picture by W. Dobson in the National Portrait Gallery.

by these disasters. Notwithstanding his loyalty, the works of Quarles have a tinge of Puritanism and ascetic piety that might have mollified the rage of his persecutors. His poems include A Feast for Wormes set forth in a Poeme of the History of Jonah (1620); Hadassa: History of Queene Ester (1621); Job Militant (1624); Sion's Elegies (1625); Argalus and Parthenia (1629, on the story from Sidney's Arcadia); Historie of Samson (1631); Divine Emblems (1635); and Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man (1638), the two last quaintly illustrated. The Emblems were wonderfully popular, but rather with the people than the cultured or well-born. Even in his own time Anthony Wood sneered at him, though a staunch royalist, as 'an old puritanicall poet . . the sometime darling of our plebeian judgments.' After the Restoration, when things sacred and serious were usually neglected or made the subject of ribald jests, Quarles seems to have been entirely lost to the public. Even Pope, who had

he really studied him, could not have overlooked his vivid fancy and point, notices only his bathos and absurdity, and says, referring to the engraved emblems, that he is saved by beauties not his own. The more catholic taste of modern times has, not without recalcitrants, admitted the divine emblemist into the 'laurelled fraternity of poets, where, if he does not occupy a conspicuous place, he is at least sure of his due measure of attention. Charles Lamb hesitated whether Quarles was not to be preferred to Wither, and did not hesitate to rank him as the wittier of the two. Thoreau said he uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare.' Yet he is not quoted or discussed at all in such a representative work as Ward's English Poets. 'Emblems,' combining the graphic and poetic arts, to inculcate lessons of morality and religion, had been tried with success by Henry Peacham (c. 1576-1643), author of the Compleat Gentleman, by Wither, and by others. Quarles found his model in Hermann Hugo (1588-1629, a Jesuit of Brussels, who was almoner to Spinola on the battlefield, and died of plague in the Spanish camp. From Hugo's Pia Desideria Quarles directly copied a great part of his prints and mottoes, and inevitably followed the thought to some extent, in the later books mainly paraphrasing Hugo; but the best in his verses is all his own. His style is that of his age-studded with conceits, often extravagant, outré, and ridiculous. But amidst his contortions he shows real power, and true wit mixed with the false. His epigrammatic union of wit and devotion made him in some measure a precursor of Young and his Night Thoughts.

Flowers.

As when a lady, walking Flora's bowre,
Picks here a pinke, and there a gillyflowre,
Now plucks a violet from her purple bed,
And then a primrose, the yeere's maiden-head,
There nips the bryer, here the lover's pansy,
Shifting her dainty pleasures with her fancy,
This on her arms, and that she lists to weare
Upon the borders of her curious haire;
At length a rose-bud, passing all the rest,
She plucks, and bosoms in her lilly brest.
(From the History of Ester)

The Shortness of Life.
And what's a Life?-a weary pilgrimage.
Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage
With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.
And what's a life?-the flourishing array
Of the proud summer meadow, which to day
Wears her green plush, and is to morrow hay.

Reade on this diall how the shades devour
My short-liv'd winter's day! houre eats up houre;
Alas, the totall's but from eight to foure.

Behold these lilies (which thy hands have made
Fair copies of my life, and open laid

To view) how soon they droop, how soon they fade.

Shade not that diall, night will blind too soon ;
My nonag'd day already points to noon;
How simple is my suit! how small my boon!

Nor do I beg this slender inch, to while
The time away, or falsely to beguile

My thoughts with joy: here 's nothing worth a smile.

Mors Tua.

Can he be faire that withers at a blast?

Or he be strong that ayery breath can cast?
Can he be wise that knowes not how to live?
Or he be rich that nothing hath to give?
Can he be young that's feeble, weake, and wan?

So faire, strong, wise, so rich, so young is man.
So faire is man, that Death (a parting blast)
Blasts his fair flower, and makes him earth at last ;
So strong is man, that with a gasping breath
He totters, and bequeathes his strength to Death;
So wise is man, that if with Death he strive,
His wisedom cannot teach him how to live;
So rich is man, that (all his debts being paid)
His wealth's the winding-sheet wherein he 's laid;
So young is man, that, broke with care and sorrow,
He's old enough to-day to dye to-morrow :
Why brag'st thou, then, thou worm of five foot long?
Th'art neither fair, nor strong, nor wise, nor rich, nor young.
(From A Feast for Wormes.)

The Vanity of the World.

False world, thou ly'st; thou canst not lend

What mean dull souls, in this high measure, To haberdash

In earth's base wares, whose greatest treasure
Is drosse and trash?

The height of whose inchaunting pleasure
Is but a flash?

Are these the goods that thou supply'st

Us mortalls with? Are these the high'st?

Can these bring cordiall peace? false world, thou ly'st. (From the Emblems.)

Delight in God only.

I love and have some cause to love-the earth:
She is my Maker's creature, therefore good:
She is my mother, for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse, she gives me food;
But what's a creature, Lord, compared with Thee?
Or what's my mother or my nurse to me?

I love the aire: her dainty sweets refresh

My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me ;

Her shrill-mouthed quire sustains me with their flesh,
And with their polyphonian notes delight me :

But what's the aire or all the sweets that she
Can blesse my soul withall compared to Thee?

I love the sea she is my fellow-creature,

My carefull purveyer; she provides me store: She walls me round; she makes my diet greater; She wafts my treasure from a forrein shore :

But, Lord of oceans, when compared with Thee, What is the ocean or her wealth to me?

To heaven's high citie I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great atturney,
Transcends the crystall pavement of the skie:

But what is heaven, great God, compared to Thee?
Without thy presence, heaven 's no heaven to me.

Without thy presence earth gives no refection;
Without thy presence sea affords no treasure ;
Without thy presence air 's a rank infection;
Without thy presence heaven it self's no pleasure :
If not possessed, if not enjoyed in Thee,
What 's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?

The highest honours that the world can boast,
Are subjects farre too low for my desire;
The brightest beams of glory are at most
But dying sparkles of thy living fire:

The loudest flames that earth can kindle, be
But nightly glow-worms, if compared to Thee.

Without thy presence, wealth are bags of cares;
Wisdome but folly; joy, disquiet-sadnesse ;
Friendship is treason, and delights are snares;
Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing madnesse ;
Without thee, Lord, things be not what they be,
Nor have they being, when compared with Thee.

In having all things, and not Thee, what have I ?
Not having Thee, what have my labours got?
Let me enjoy but Thee, what farther crave I?
And having Thee alone, what have I not?
I wish nor sea nor land; nor would I be
Possesst of heaven, heaven unpossest of Thee.
(From the Emblems.)

garner

The saplesse branches doff their summer suits
And wain their winter fruits;
And stormy blasts have forced the quaking trees
To wrap their trembling limbs in suits of mossy freez.
(From the Hieroglyphikes.)

In an elegy on a friend he has these fine lines:

No azure dapples my bedarkened skies;
My passion has no April in her eyes.

See Dr A. G. Grosart's complete edition of Quarles's Works (3 vols., Chertsey Worthies Library, 1874).

Henry King (1592-1669), born at Worminghall, Bucks, and educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, was the son of a Bishop of London, and himself in 1642 became Bishop of Chichester. He was expelled by the Parliament in 1643; his estates were sequestrated and his library seized; but he was reinstated at the Restoration. His poems are largely elegiacon his wife, Prince Henry, King Charles I. and 'murdered' Royalists, Gustavus Adolphus, 'my ever desired friend Dr Donne,' 'my dead friend Ben Jonson,' and other less-known intimates and contemporaries. There are also translations of the Psalms and devotional poems. His Poems and Psalms, edited by Archdeacon Hannah (1843), was but a selection; a promised volume to contain the rest of the English poems was never published.

The Dirge.

What is th' existence of mans life
But open war, or slumber'd strife?
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements:
And never feels a perfect peace
Till deaths cold hand signs his release.
It is a storm, where the hot blood
Out-vies in rage the boyling flood;
And each loud passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,
Which beats his bark with many a wave,
Till he casts anchor in the grave.

It is a flower, which buds, and growes,
And withers as the leaves disclose ;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep :
Then shrinks into that fatal mold
Where its first being was enroll'd.

It is a dream, whose seeming truth
Is moraliz'd in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share,
As wandring as his fancies are ;
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamer vanish quite away.

It is a diall, which points out
The sun-set as it moves about;
And shadowes out in lines of night
The subtile stages of times flight;
Till all obscuring earth hath laid
The body in perpetual shade.

It is a weary enterlude

Which doth short joyes, long woes include.
The world the stage, the prologue tears,
The acts vain hope and vary'd fears :
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but death.

Some poems attributed to him were really by Quarles. The following little poem, printed and long accepted as his, appears also among the poems of Francis Beaumont, but is more in King's characteristic vein :

Sic Vita.
Like to the falling of a starre,
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Or like the fresh springs gawdy hew,
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrow'd light
Is streight call'd in, and paid to night.

The wind blowes out; the bubble dies;
The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew dries up; the starre is shot;
The flight is past; and man forgot.

Thomas Carew (c. 1594-1639) was the forerunner of a numerous class of poets-courtiers of a gay and gallant school, who to personal accomplishments, rank, and education united a taste and talent for the conventional poetry then most popular and cultivated. A taint of sensuality and irreligion often lurked under the flowery surface of their poetry. Carew was capable, indeed, of far higher things; in him, as in Suckling, we see glimpses of real poetic gift, and he was much more careful of the form and finish of his verses than Suckling. Of Cornish ancestry, the younger son of Sir Matthew Carew, a master in Chancery, Carew was sent to Merton College, Oxford, and passed thence to the Middle Temple. He was sent to be with Sir Dudley Carleton in Florence and afterwards at The Hague; he visited the French court with Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and finally he became gentleman of the privy

chamber and sewer in ordinary to Charles I. His after-life was that of a courtier-witty, affable, accomplished, heedless, and epicurean. Clarendon says-charitably and hopefully-that he 'died with the greatest remorse for that licence, and with the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could desire.' His poems were not collected until after his death, which probably occurred in 1639.

The poems of Carew are short and occasional. The only exception is a masque, written by command of the king, entitled Cœlum Britannicum. This is partly in prose; the lyrical pieces were set to music by Dr Henry Lawes, the poetical musician of that age; and the scenery was designed by Inigo Jones. Carew's short amatory lyrics were exceedingly popular, and are now the only things of his that are read. Thirty or forty years later he would have fallen into the frigid style of the court poets after the Restoration; but at the time he wrote the passionate and imaginative vein of the Elizabethan period was not wholly exhausted. This main quality is a certain Rubenslike intensity and glow of colour. The 'genial and warm tints' of the elder muse still coloured the landscape, and these were reflected back by Carew, who forms a very interesting link between the Elizabethans and the age after himself. He came under the influence of Donne, and he abounds in extravagant conceits, even on grave elegiac subjects. In his Epitaph on the Daughter of Sir Thomas Wentworth he says:

And here the precious dust is laid,
Whose purely temper'd clay was made
So fine that it the guest betray'd.
Else the soul grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sin,
And so was hatch'd a Cherubin.

So though a virgin, yet a Bride
To every grace, she justified

A chaste Polygamy, and died.

Archbishop Trench protested against Carew's being grouped with Waller but below him: 'he is immensely his superior,' he thinks; 'in many of Carew's lighter pieces there is an underlying vein of earnestness which is wholly wanting in the other. Even those who deny him pathos or natural feeling admit him to have been at least a most accomplished writer of polished vers d'occasion. The following famous song, Edward FitzGerald said, is exaggerated, like all in Charles's time, but very beautiful.' It was extensively imitated, answered, and argued out in similar strains, and even burlesqued: there is a long series of songs beginning 'Ask me no more,' 'Tell me no more,' 'I tell you true,' 'I ask thee whence,' and the like. Song.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose?
For in your Beauty's orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day?
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more, whither doth haste
The Nightingale, when May is past?
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more, where those stars 'light
That downward fall in dead of night?
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more, if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest?
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

The Compliment.

I do not love thee for that fair
Rich fan of thy most curious hair;
Though the wires thereof be drawn
Finer than the threads of lawn,

And are softer than the leaves
On which the subtle spinner weaves.

I do not love thee for those flowers Growing on thy cheeks-Love's bowers; Though such cunning hath them spread, None can part their white and red :

Love's golden arrows thence are shot,
Yet for them I love thee not.

I do not love thee for those soft
Red coral lips I've kissed so oft;
Nor teeth of pearl, the double guard
To speech, whence music still is heard ;

Though from those lips a kiss being taken,
Would Tyrants melt, and Death awaken.

I do not love thee, oh! my fairest,
For that richest, for that rarest
Silver pillar, which stands under
Thy round head, that globe of wonder;
Though that neck be whiter far
Than towers of polish'd ivory are.

I love not for those eyes, nor hair,
Nor cheeks, nor lips, nor teeth so rare;

Nor for thy hand nor foot so small;
But wouldst thou know, dear Sweet ?-for All!

Song.

Would you know what's soft? I dare
Not bring you to the down or air;
Nor to stars to shew what 's bright,
Nor to snow to teach you white.

Nor, if you would Music hear,
Call the Orbs to take your ear;
Nor to please your sense bring forth
Bruised Nard or what 's more worth.

Or on food were your thoughts placed,
Bring you Nectar, for a taste:
Would you have all these in one?
Name my Mistress, and 'tis done.

Mediocrity in Love Rejected.

Give me more Love, or more Disdain;

The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain,

The temperate affords me none :
Either extreme, of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it be Love,

Like Danae in that golden shower, I swim in pleasure; if it prove Disdain, that torrent will devour

THOMAS CAREW.

By permission, from the Portrait of 'Two Gentlemen in the Royal Collection at Windsor.

My vulture hopes; and he's possessed
Of Heaven that's but from Hell released.
Then crown my joys or cure my pain;
Give me more Love, or more Disdain.

Disdain Returned.
He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from starlike eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires;
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires;
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes.

No tears, Celia, now shall win

My resolved heart to return;

I have search'd thy soul within,
And find nought but pride and scorn;
I have learn'd thy arts, and now
Can disdain as much as thou.

Some Power, in my revenge, convey

That Love to her I cast away.

The Spring.

Now that the Winter's gone, the Earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or calls an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy Cuckoo and the Humble-bee;
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels sing,
In triumph to the world, the youthful Spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.

Now all things smile: only my Love doth lour,
Nor hath the scalding noon-day Sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter flie
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open field; and love no more is made
By the fire-side, but in the cooler shade.
Amyntas now doth by his Cloris sleep
Under a Sycamore, and all things keep

Time with the season: only she doth carry

June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Carew's Poems (1640) have been edited by W. C. Hazlitt (18) J. W. Ebsworth (1893), and Arthur Vincent ('Muses Library,' 1899

William Strode (1602-45), born near Plymp ton, Devon, from Westminster passed to Christ Church, Oxford, and became canon thereof and public orator, as well as doctor of divinity. He must have known Lyly's 'Cupid and my Campaspe (page 315).

Answer to 'The Lover's Melancholy.'

Return, my joys! and hither bring

A tongue not made to speak, but sing,
A jolly spleen, an inward feast;
A causeless laugh without a jest ;
A face which gladness doth anoint;
An arm for joy, flung out of joint;
A sprightful gait that leaves no print,
And makes a feather of a flint;

A heart that 's lighter than the air;
An eye still dancing in its sphere;
Strong mirth which nothing shall control;
A body nimbler than a soul;
Free wandering thoughts not tied to muse,
Which, thinking all things, nothing choose,
Which, ere we see them come, are gone:
These life itself doth feed upon.

Men take no care but only to be jolly;
To be more wretched than we must, is folly.

Kisses.

My love and I for kisses played :

She would keep stakes-I was content; But when I won, she would be paid;

This made me ask her what she meant. 'Pray, since I see,' quoth she, 'your wrangling vein. Take your own kisses; give me mine again.'