ters like Burton, Browne,
and Taylor, or to the massive splendours of the Elizabethan poets proper.
The poetry of the Caroline age was, therefore, a little slurred, and this
mishap of falling between two schools has constantly recurred to it. Some
critics even who have done its separate authors justice, have subsequently
indulged in palinodes, have talked about decadence and Alexandrianism and
what not. The majority have simply let the Cavalier Poets (as they are
sometimes termed by a mere historical coincidence) be something more than
the victims of the schools that preceded and followed them. The lovers of
the school of good sense which Waller founded regard the poets of this
chapter as extravagant concettists; the lovers of the Elizabethan school
proper regard them as effeminate triflers. One of Milton's gorgeous but
constantly illogical phrases about the poets of his day may perhaps have
created a prejudice against these poets. But Milton was a politician as
well as a poet, a fanatic as well as a man of letters of seldom equalled,
and never, save in two or three cases, surpassed powers. He was also a man
of a more morose and unamiable private character than any other great poet
the world has known except Racine. The easy _bonhomie_ of the Caroline muse
repelled his austerity; its careless good-breeding shocked his middle-class
and Puritan Philistinism; its laxity revolted his principles of morality.
Not improbably the vein of sympathy which discovers itself in the exquisite
verse of the _Comus_, of the _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_, of _Lycidas_
itself, infuriated him (as such veins of sympathy when they are rudely
checked and turned from their course will often do) with those who indulged
instead of checking it. But because _Lycidas_ is magnificent, and _Il
Penseroso_ charming poetry, we are not to think meanly of "Fair
Daffodils," or "Ask me no more," of "Going to the Wars," or "Tell me no
more how fair she is."

Let us clear our minds of this cant, and once more admit, as the student of
literature always has to remind himself, that a sapphire and diamond ring
is not less beautiful because it is not a marble palace, or a bank of wild
flowers in a wood because it is not a garden after the fashion of Lenotre.
In the division of English poetry which we have been reviewing, there are
to be found some of the most exquisite examples of the gem and flower order
of beauty that can be found in all literature. When Herrick bids P