is not proposed to treat in
this volume. All, without exception, show the influence in different ways
of Ben Jonson and of Donne. But each has its own peculiarity. We find these
peculiarities, together with anticipations of post-Reformation
characteristics, mixed very curiously in the miscellanies of the time.
These are interesting enough, and may be studied with advantage, if not
also with pleasure, in the principal of them, _Wit's Recreations_ (1640).
This, with certain kindred works (_Wit Restored_, and the very unsavoury
_Musarum Deliciae_ of Sir John Mennis and Dr. Smith), has been more than
once republished. In these curious collections, to mention only one
instance, numerous pieces of Herrick's appeared with considerable variants
from the text of the _Hesperides_; and in their pages things old and new,
charming pastoral poems, _vers de societe_ of very unequal merit, ballads,
satires, epigrams, and a large quantity of mere scatology and doggerel, are
heaped together pell-mell. Songs from the dramatists, especially Fletcher,
make their appearance, sometimes with slight variants, and there are forms
of the drinking song in _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ long after, and of Sir
John Suckling's "Ballad on a Wedding," apparently somewhat before, their
respective publication in their proper places. Here is the joke about the
wife and the almanack which reckless tradition has told of Dryden; printed
when Lady Elizabeth Howard was in the nursery, and Dryden was not yet at
Westminster. Here we learn how, probably about the second or third decade
of the century, the favourite authors of learned ladies were "Wither,
Draiton, and Balzack" (Guez de Balzac of the _Letters_), a very singular
trio; and how some at least loved the "easy ambling" of Heywood's prose,
but thought that he "grovelled on the stage," which it must be confessed he
not uncommonly did. _Wit Restored_ contains the charming "Phillida flouts
Me," with other real "delights." Even Milton makes his appearance in these
collections, which continued to be popular for more than a century, and
acquired at intervals fresh vogue from the great names of Dryden and Pope.

Neglecting or returning from these, we may class the minor Caroline poets
under the following heads. There are belated Elizabethans like Habington,
sacred poets of the school of Herbert, translators like Stanley, Sherburne,
and Quarles, philosophico-theological poets like Joseph Beaumont and More,
and poets of s