ts just surveyed, both these questions can be answered with
an unhesitating affirmative. If we had not these poets, one particular
savour, one particular form, of the poetical rapture would be lacking to
the poetical expert; just as if what Herrick himself calls "the brave
Burgundian wine" were not, no amount of claret and champagne could replace
it. For passionate sense of the good things of earth, and at the same time
for mystical feeling of their insecurity, for exquisite style without the
frigidity and the over-correctness which the more deliberate stylists
frequently display, for a blending of Nature and art that seems as if it
must have been as simply instinctive in all as it certainly was in some,
the poets of the Tribe of Ben, of the Tribe of Donne, who illustrated the
period before Puritanism and Republicanism combined had changed England
from merriment to sadness, stand alone in letters. We have had as good
since, but never the same--never any such blending of classical frankness,
of mediaeval simplicity and chivalry, of modern reflection and thought.[61]

[61] Since this book first appeared, some persons whose judgment I respect
have expressed to me surprise and regret that I have not given a higher and
larger place to Henry Vaughan. A higher I cannot give, because I think him,
despite the extreme beauty of his thought and (more rarely) of his
expression, a most imperfect poet; nor a larger, because that would involve
a critical arguing out of the matter, which would be unsuitable to the plan
and scale of this book. Had he oftener written as he wrote in the famous
poem referred to in the text, or as in the magnificent opening of "The
World"--

"I saw Eternity the other night,
_Like a great ring of pure and endless light_,
All calm as it was bright,"

there would be much more to say of him. But he is not master of the
expression suitable to his noble and precious thought except in the
briefest bursts--bursts compared to which even Crashaw's are sustained and
methodical. His admirers claim for "The Retreat" the germ of Wordsworth's
great ode, but if any one will compare the two he will hardly complain that
Vaughan has too little space here.

CHAPTER XI

THE FOURTH DRAMATIC PERIOD

Two great names remain to be noticed in the Elizabethan drama (though
neither produced a play till after Elizabeth was dead), some interesting
playwrights of third or fourth-rate importance have to be add