' is in exactly the right tone; and
with Dorset, whose 'To all you ladies now on land' is another typical
specimen. By-and-by Dryden showed how well he could write in the
familiar style, when he composed the song about fair Iris:

'She's fickle and false, and there we agree,
For I am as false and as fickle as she;
We neither believe what either can say,
And neither believing, we neither betray.'

Then came the reign of Pope, and Swift, and Prior, and
Peterborough--Pope, with his truly playful 'What is Prudery?' Swift,
with his charming lines to Stella; Prior, with his 'Dear Chloe, how
blubber'd is that pretty face!' and Peterborough, with that masterpiece
of the familiar _genre_:

'I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking,
Thou wild thing, that always art leaping and aching,
What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation,
By turns has not taught thee this pit-a-pat-ation?'

Then there were the Lady Wortley Montagu, with her lines to Congreve;
and Chesterfield, with his 'Advice to a Lady in Autumn'; Fielding, with
his inimitable epistles to Walpole; and Goldsmith, with his incomparable
'Retaliation.' Later, again, came Cowper, with his 'Nose and Eyes' and
'Names of Little Note'; Byron, with his verses 'To Tom Moore'; Moore
himself, with his 'Time I've Lost in Wooing'; Barham, with his 'Lines
left at Hook's'; Peacock, Canning, James Smith, Praed, and Mahony; and,
still later, Hood, with his 'Clapham Academy'; Brough, with his
'Neighbour Nelly'; Mortimer Collins, with his tribute to his 'Old Coat';
and a hundred others, all of whom could play delightfully on the
familiar string.

And, happily, the manufacture of familiar verse still goes on
swimmingly. The Laureate has engaged in it, and even Mr. Browning has
condescended to it. It has never, in the whole course of its career,
been written better than by Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lowell, and, among
ourselves, by Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Austin Dobson. No age,
indeed, was ever more favourable than our own for the composition of
verse which should, above all things, never be betrayed into
exaggeration--which may have, if it please, a _soupcon_ of wit and
humour, and even of sentiment, but which should, in particular, be
tolerant and urbane.

SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND.

It was with true instinct that one of our most vigorous orators,
desiring the other day to emphasize by quotation an appeal to the
patriotic sentiments of his audi