ction. Early in 1648, Joseph Beaumont, afterwards Master of
Peterhouse, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, published his
poem called _Psyche, or Love's Mystery_, in twenty cantos. "My desire
is," he says in the preface, "that this book may prompt better wits to
believe that a divine theam is as capable and happy a subject of poetical
ornament, as any pagan or humane device whatsoever." The poem is about
four times as long as _Paradise Lost_, and was written in eleven months,
which circumstance, his admiring biographer allows, "may create some
surprise in a reader unacquainted with the vigorous imagination, and
fertile flow of fancy, which so remarkably distinguished our author from
the common class of writers." A further explanation by the same eulogist,
who edited Beaumont's _Original Poems_ in 1749, makes all clear. "Our
Author," it appears, "did not look upon poetry as the serious business of
his life; for whilst he was thus amusing his leisure hours with the
Muses, he wrote a full and clear commentary upon the Book of
Ecclesiastes, and large critical notes upon the Pentateuch." After this,
the astonished reader will perhaps be disinclined to verify the
statement, reluctantly made, that in the poems of our author "we
sometimes meet with a vicious copiousness of style, at others, with an
affectation of florid, gay, and tedious descriptions; nor did he always
use the language of nature."

Next, Cowley "came in robustiously and put for it with a deal of
violence" in his sacred poem entitled _Davideis_. In the exordium of the
First Book he proclaims his mission:--

Too long the _Muses-Lands_ have _Heathen_ bin
Their _Gods_ too long were _Devils_, and _Vertues Sin_;
But _Thou, Eternal World_, hast call'd forth _Me_,
Th' _Apostle_, to convert that _World_ to _Thee_:
T' unbind the charms that in slight _Fables_ lie,
And teach that _Truth_ is _truest Poesie_.

But it was not to be. His "polisht _Pillars_ of strong _Verse_" were
destined never to carry a roof. The theme, so vigorously introduced, soon
languished; and by the time he had completed a Fourth Book, it lay, for
all his nursing skill, prematurely dead on his hands. The poem is not
finished, and yet there is nothing to add.

After Cowley in date of composition, but before him in date of
publication, Davenant in his _Gondibert_ shows traces of the prevalent
ambition. He rejects all supernatural fables, and makes it a point of
sound doctrin