not
in couplets but in rhyme royal--a metre of which the author was so fond
that he even translated the _Troilus and Cressida_ of Chaucer into Latin,
retaining the seven-line stanza and its rhymes. Kynaston, who was a member
of both universities and at one time proctor at Cambridge, was a man
interested in various kinds of learning, and even started an Academy or
_Museum Minervae_ of his own. In _Leoline and Sydanis_ he sometimes comes
near to the mock heroic, but in his lyrics called _Cynthiades_ he comes
nearer still to the best Caroline cry. One or two of his pieces have found
their way into anthologies, but until the present writer reprinted his
works[60] he was almost unknown.

[60] In _Minor Caroline Poets_, vols. i. and ii. (Oxford, 1905-6). An
important addition to the religious verse of the time was made by Mr.
Dobell with the _Poems_ (London, 1903) of Thomas Traherne, a follower of
Herbert, with some strange anticipations of Blake.

The most important by far, however, of this group is William Chamberlayne,
a physician of Shaftesbury, who, before or during the Civil War, began and
afterwards finished (publishing it in 1659) the very long heroic romance of
_Pharonnida_, a story of the most involved and confused character but with
episodes of great vividness and even sustained power: a piece of
versification straining the liberties of _enjambement_ in line and want of
connection in syntax to the utmost; but a very mine of poetical expression
and imagery. Jewels are to be picked up on every page by those who will
take the trouble to do so, and who are not offended by the extraordinary
nonchalance of the composition.

The _Theophila_ of Edward Benlowes (1603?-1676) was printed in 1652 with
elaborate and numerous engravings by Hollar, which have made it rare, and
usually imperfect when met with. Benlowes was a Cambridge man (of St.
John's College) by education, but lived latterly and died at Oxford, having
been reduced from wealth to poverty by the liberality which made his
friends anagrammatise his name into "Benevolus." His work was abused as an
awful example of the extravagant style by Butler (_Character of a Small
Poet_), and by Warburton in the next century; but it was never reprinted
till the date of the collection just noted. It is a really curious book,
displaying the extraordinary _diffusion_ of poetical spirit still existing,
but in a hectic and decadent condition. Benlowes--a Cleveland with more
poetry