er neglected; or if an author so far respected ancient practice
as to make lines which could be scanned like verse, he had done his
part, and was perfectly indifferent, although they sounded like
prose.[12] But as melody will be always acceptable to the ear, some
poets chose this neglected road to fame, and gained a portion of public
favour, by attending to the laws of harmony, which their rivals had
discarded. Waller and Denham were the first who thus distinguished
themselves; but, as Johnson happily remarks, what was acquired by
Denham, was inherited by Waller. Something there was in the situation of
both these authors, which led them to depart from what was then the
beaten path of composition. They were men of rank, wealth, and fashion,
and had experienced all the interruptions to deep study, with which such
elevated station is naturally attended. It was in vain for Waller, a
wit, a courtier, and a politician; or for Denham, who was only
distinguished at the university as a dreaming, dissipated gambler, to
attempt to rival the metaphysical subtleties of Donne and Cowley, who
had spent serious and sequestered lives in acquiring the knowledge and
learning which they squandered in their poetry. Necessity, therefore and
perhaps a dawning of more simple taste, impelled these courtly poets to
seek another and more natural mode of pleasing. The melody of verse was
a province unoccupied, and Waller, forming his rhythm upon the
modulation of Fairfax, and other poets of the maiden reign, exhibited in
his very first poem[13] striking marks of attention to the suavity of
numbers. Denham, in his dedication to Charles II., informs us, that the
indulgence of his poetical vein had drawn the notice, although
accompanied with the gentle censure, of Charles I., when, in 1647, he
obtained access to his person by the intercession of Hugh Peters.
Suckling, whom Dryden has termed "a sprightly wit, and a courtly
writer," may be added to the list of smooth and easy poets of the
period, and had the same motives as Denham and Waller for attaching
himself to that style of composition. He was allowed to have the
peculiar art of making whatever he did become him; and it cannot be
doubted, that his light and airy style of ballads and sonnets had many
admirers. Upon the whole, this class of poets, although they hardly
divided the popular favour with the others, were also noticed and
applauded. Thus the poets of the earlier part of the seventeenth cen